Destroyed
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Chapter 18: Hidden
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"I hope I'm old, before I die..
I hope I live, to relive, the days gone by.."
~ Robbie Williams
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He woke slowly and not without a certain amount of pain in his chest.
It ached and stung, and the acrid scent of fire was in the air. It tingled like magic and wincing Leon moved his fingers over the sickly sweet smelling flesh and the tear through his clothing. It smouldered and reeked, but lifting his head up he could only see steps leading up and behind him, steps leading down into darkness.
A little way behind him and resting at a strange angle to the stonework was jammed his gunblade, the edge driven deeply into the step and wall.
Coughing in earnest, Leon got onto his knees and sat back, letting his legs and calves take his weight as his fingers poked the wound in his chest and he tried piecing together just what had happened to him and why he was no spread eagled on the floor with little recollection.
Aeris had attacked them.
Aeris had thrown a fireball, one of her more easily wielded spells.
Afraid and in awe as he was of magic, even from the time before he knew about the Sorceress' and SeeD's ultimate means to an end.. before then.. magic.. Primal and unleashed by the iron will of a small, delicate girl. If she had indeed attacked him and managed to evade Yuffie and Cid then she was most likely running down into her world by now, looking for whatever drew her.
For a moment his sulky nature balked after running behind her, but then after that elapse his kind and caring love for the willful and strange flower girl kicked in and he moved over slowly to pick up his gunblade.
Cid. Yuffie.
What had happened to them?
As his leather gloved hand grasped the hilt of the gunblade, he began levering himself up onto it and then brushed his dark hair from his smoked blue eyes. His left knee felt a little weak and apart from obvious bruises, cuts and the large burn, he felt no worse for wear.
Much more dangerous spells, after all, had been thrown at him during the second Sorceress' war, during the time when he and Rinoa, Zell, Irvine, Selphie and Quistis had stood up against the night and said in one loud voice, "no." Leon... Squall was a survivor, and whatever it meant he had to do to survive he would, and now he would also do whatever it took to bring Aeris back to reason and follow her.
Limping gently, he made his way up the stairs, feeling the flickering eyes of the wall torches and the ashes they scattered asunder over the room. Treading lightly past this, he made it up towards the large room where Aeris had remembered seeing, where the bridge between worlds existed.
The door swung slowly from it's hinges..
Covering his mouth to shield against the sickly smell he looked down in complete horror at the still body by his foot.
It's blond hair and strange shirt was almost unrecognisable from the back and as Leon turned it over with a hesitant toe the face revolved round. It was disgusting, a sickening mass of ruined flesh that still smoked. Bloodied cuts enamoured the face and ran in dark trails of burnt blood from the mouth, nose and eyes. Where the nose had once been was a charred lump of bone. The eyes had boiled in their sockets and clear liquid was still seeping from one. The throat looked almost as if the force of the spell had ripped his throat out, and swallowing Leon took a single step away from the corpse that had once been Cid Highwind.
Why?
Aeris wasn't like this, she was gentle and sweet and now she was on some kind of lunatic rampage.
A low cry made his head turn and shuffling past the corpse, he moved to the other body in the room.
It was Yuffie, curled over and holding her right leg, her hands trembled as they seemed to strain to keep bone and muscle together, her face all screwed up in pain. Shadows of raven fell over her cheekbones, and the usually happily smiling mouth was contorted in agony.
"Ow..ow.." she gasped between sobs, the tears cutting tracks in the soot.
"Hey, Yuffie.. it's me. Relax."
"Why did she.. ow ow.. Leon it hurts!"
Murmuring that he knew, he forced Yuffie to let go of her right leg and looked down on the broken shard of her shin bone that was thrust out through the skin, blood and torn muscle surrounding the terrible lesion. He wasn't what one would called skilled in the use of magic, but he did remember early field medical lessons.
Grapsing at the edges of his white vest, he tore off three strips of material, and then ignoring as best he could the yowls of pain from the poor ninja, he bound up the leg against one of the slats of the door.
"Cid?" she cried, holding onto her leg the instant his hands left.
Of course, the two had known one another a long time. "I'm sorry," was all he could say.
The look of swift pain welling up in the girls violet eyes, even in the half light of the room was more than he could bear. Looking away, Leon ruffled a hand through his hair and pretended he couldn't hear the broken pain in Yuffie's small whisperings.
"Why, Leon... why?"
"I don't know."
The silence was broken between them as it grew by another voice.
"I do."
He skittered a look up and over his shoulder towards the doorway. A man as if made from molten shadow stood there, a long crimson cloak about his squared shoulders, a torn set of purple pants tucked into army issue leather boots, bound with belt straps to mid calf. His shirt under was also dark in colour, a dark purple too and ribbed like old style polo vests. The cowl of the hood was torn and wrapped over the lower half of the shadowy face, the hand that was half dug into the wooden doorframe was metal. The right hand was not. Standing above all this, was a shock of pale blonde hair.
His cold blue eyes emerged from the light, over a straight nose and a cool expression. Then slowly as his toe hit the edge of Cid Highwind's body, he looked down and the pain mirrored from Yuffie's eyes emerged if briefly, only to be swallowed up again by determination or perhaps anger.
"Cid.." he murmured, then looked across at the ninja. "It's good to see you again, little thief."
"Cloud!" she cried out, in ragged, grief stricken tones.
Again, Leon knew what it was like to have his world crash down about him..
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
~ Did you ever dream of this power or place? ~
Her body was moving, she was vaguely aware, but horror superceded all else.
She had harmed the very ones she loved, the very ones she was trying to save.
Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks and in some small fashion she welcomed this end to ends, this chance to be free.. it would all end.
~ You don't have to be afraid any more, Aeris. ~
Her teeth gritted, as the cold snows howled endlessly about her. She was walking up from the entrance to Hollow Bastion which had been found in the Ancient's City, towards the Knowlespole. The damage of the world had run deep, so deep that no one had even really seen where the scars of the wounding had gone.
It ran under the crust and along the planet, causing wells of Mako energy, or rather the Lifestream. It emerged as something dangerous to anything non Cetra. Here she was, in the freezing light of dim day, her footprints swallowed up behind her by the screaming cold.
Why couldn't she wake up?
She wasn't afraid anymore...
~ Good.. good.. ~
She had nothing left to lose now, after all.
So saying, she formulated the only plan she could, and prayed whole heartedly that the Planet forgave her.. someone had to.
Hidden in the winds, she trudged onwards.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Cloud nodded, as he held Yuffie in his arms.
The girl's leg was too damaged for her to walk no matter what the case and Cloud too, like Leon, was less versed in magic than most and the ninja's mind was too clouded with pain for her to even muster the will to create magic. The materia pouch hung useless for the time being at her side.
As Yuffie clung to him, walking down the bridge between worlds, to his homeworld, the ex-Soldier couldn't help but marvel at events. Yuffie and Leon alive and Aeris, just missed by him. But the dark news they told him had only affirmed his suspicions.
Seph was controlling Aeris.
It was like working against a madman with only one thing on his mind for all eternity, to become a God by infusing with the lifeforce of the planet itself. In essence it made Sephiroth no better than the Heartless himself. It lowered him to their level. Rather then be the one to suggest it however, he had kept his peace and travelled after him like a shade ever lurking after light.
This time he had to put the madman to rest.
He had to end it all.
Leon walked in stony silence beside him, leather gloved hands tucked into baggy jean pockets. His denim coat was high waisted and trimmed in red with silvery stitching. Under it he wore a torn white shirt, spattered with burnholes and the blood of his own wound which he didn't speak about. But the man had a pensive expression, as if waiting for the world to shatter.
Cloud had a very good idea what was going on.
~ She doesn't know the spells she makes just by breathing. ~
Aeris, of course. The slender girl with her charismatic smile and effervescent nature was wild and gentle at the same time and the confusing mixture of seduction and sweetness, was enough to reel a man in, or send him crazy. What made it worse was the fact she was always blithely unaware of what she did to men.
~She was always much more involved in the Planet. In what she could do for our future.. ~
His blue eyes slid to Leon's grim mask.
~ But like him, I only wanted one future.. With her. ~
He sighed, looking past those he walked with and his mind settling into an unnerving state of calm. Lights and phantasms passed him by and for a moment, he found himself thinking of the past.. of where it had all gone wrong..
~*~
There was only the faintest of whispers at first, teasing over his numb senses and the daring of the dark into which he had spiralled hours previously. There was a strange deadening of limbs, as the whispering continued, soft and sweet across his flash burnt brain.
"Cloud, can you hear me?"
He turned over in pain, there was definitely a bed under him for a moment but then even that faded as he hung weightless in the air of his own dreamscape and awaited his words and her words. All that existed was here and now.
"Yeah.. I can hear you, sorry for what happened."
"Don't worry about it.."
He opened his eyes, and took in a slow breath. The world was beautiful.
He was stood in a glade of trees that offered shade and canopy overhead in a twisting of limbs and leaves, their bodies bent and smiling down in gemlike effervesence. Leaves like shining slivers of sapphire let in rays of a pale sun, the chill of some wind that brought with it only freshness and magic, tingling down his senses. The ground was soft packed dirt with grass growing everywhere and somewhere overhead he could swear he heard spirits chittering happily.
"I can't help it.." he replied miserably.
The temple. The Materia. The wounding and the beating.
All his fault, all his own damned fault.
"Then, why don't you really worry about it?" she appeared.
Unbroken and unbruised, her form straight but slender in the rise and fall of the dappled sunshine and now more than ever he felt irrevocably drawn to her, to her spirit. Something would always connect him to her, and unwittingly he reached out to her, even as she turned her face towards him and smiled.
That sweet smile, surrounded by the falls of golden brown hair and the light dancing in her bright green eyes. So wild and fey and not meant for this world, this life and violence. "And let me take care of you, so you don't have a breakdown.. okay?"
He put a hand on his hip, unsurprised when she doubled back and vanished behind another tree, less surprised that here he wore his usual clothes. His self made raiment against the world and memories he would rather forget. His bright blue eyes took in the wood and then with curiosity leaking through his voice, he said, "what is this place?"
She was there again, stepping out infront of him like a ghost with her thoughtful expression on her face, as her feet settled soundlessly on the floor. "This forests leads to the City of the Ancients, and is called the Sleeping Forest. It's only a matter of time until Sephiroth uses Meteor.. that's why I'm going to protect it, only a survivor of the Cetra, like me, can do it."
Her expression turned beautiful and melancholy. He had a thousand questions. Protect what? Why you? Was she leaving?
"This secret is up there, or at least it should be. It feels like I'm being led, drawn by something.." she took one last look at him and a whole world of compassion was in them.
Never had the urge to reach out and hold her there been this strong before..
Never.
He lifted his hand as she lifted hers, and waved with a sweet and upbeat smile.
"Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back, when this is all over.."
She turned and left, running down towards destiny and cruel fate that would reave her from him eventually, and with tears on his face he reached out in desperation, "Aeris!!!"
~*~
"...Aeris," he said under his breath, and look past shards of blond hair and down towards the world.
Perhaps this time it would all be different, he would make it different no matter what she wanted or thought was going to happen. Even if he was broken and too damaged for her now.. she would have Leon and Yuffie and a world to call her own.. a new life.
A new start.
That was what she needed, not a haunting reminder of her bloody past..
Nodding and ignoring the odd looks he got from Leon and Yuffie, he stopped by the end of the pathway and looked out over the last city he had imagined he would ever come to.
Spreading an arm with no amount of bitterness hidden in his voice, he said in soft undertones, "Welcome, to the City of the Ancients.."
Echoing, his voice ran about the city and haunted where Aeris had stepped, like cruel and hunting magic.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A day passed and relentlessly they tracked him/her.
But he had a plan, ignoring the wails of fury from inside, the unfocused anger and magic.
Deep inside the Labyrinth of fallen rooms, corridors and strange temples to dark powers that made up the epi-centre of the wound of the planet, he waited and waited. His laughter was soft, for so close now was his goal was in sight, in touching distance..
HE would be a god.. and finally everything would be as Mother promised.
But deep inside, he was careless.. and she kept beating..
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"How much further?" asked the weary girl, pushing her lank hair behind an ear and then adjusting the strip of material that lanced over her forehead and kept some of her unruly mop from falling in her eyes. Her already shoddy clothes were ripped in several places from the hazardous climb into the Knowlespole centre, where it had all caved in due to tremors and the announcment of Holy rushing up from the Planet's core.
Leon and Cloud were in no better state.
Cloud's trousers were badly torn, one leg almost non existant and showing scars through it, his cloak clawed and ripped half to shreds. His hair was just about managing it's spiky behaviour but it might have been due to the fact that Cloud kept running a hand over it, old pride helping maintain it. The bandages over the buster sword were now blood soaked and only just clinging to the sharp blade.
Leon had abandoned his undershirt a while back in favour of bandages in the Snow Village, where Yuffie had also been cured by a local materia dealer and his natural talent with the magic. Back on track, Leon had later stumbled unawares over the unfamiliar terrain and landed headlong into a snowdrift and a hidden rock which has gashed his eyebrow and left him with a wound that may eventually scar him.
He had grumbled about more scars, in addition to his facial one, as they had climbed in.
The centre of the Knowlespole was much different to what Cloud remembered.
When he and his friends had come through here last, it had been a winding cave of pockmarked holes and strange signs, letters written in Cetra and other dead tongues as mankind had evolved. Strange symbols and drawings were the epitome of the landscape and half ruined altars to the Cetra powers.
He remembered the magic.
He remembered the voices.
As his eyes focused off into the distance, Leon began walking about the thin ledge carefully and looking down and under it.
They were lodged on the thin ledge where he had last been inside the wound, where he and Tifa had checked one another for wounds and waved across to his friends. Unbidden, those sharp feelings rose in his throat. Would he never be free of it?
His clarity of recall painted them in, Cid trying to start the ship and acrid odour of petrol and strange fluids on the air, the tang of blood tasted in his torn mouth as he watched in desperation, lifting his cloak to hide the wounds thereabouts. The vision of Nanaki standing true and proud at Cosmo Canyon, giving Cloud and his friends time to get away from the world, his red fur gleaming like an abandoned sunset. The violent mysteries of Vincent and how he had roared in rage and set his inner demons loose, the blood and violence but through it all they had kept moving to the City and the gateway.
To where Aeris would be.
In the end, so many had died, so many innocents and because of one man's insane addiction to power.
"Hey, there's a hole here."
Lifting his head at the voice, Cloud shifted his eyes across to where Leon was knelt over the opening, his leather covered hands gripping the boulder that had slid over it, "Lend me a hand," he grunted.
Yuffie stepped hesitantly forward but Cloud shook his head and instead let her hold his sword. She took it with delicate and careful hands, wincing at the blood. But the ex-soldier pretended not to notice and moved towards the boulder, and pressed his fingers round the smoothed edges. In concert with the underestimated strength of the taller man, Leon, the two slowly shifted the boulder, and with momentum it rolled aside easily to show a strange passage cut into the rockface.
It looked almost entirely natural with strange luminescence coming from the walls, and a soft springy dirt packed underfoot. For a second it almost looked like something Cloud recognised, then shaking his head he reclaimed his sword from Yuffie who slipped past the two men as they stared.
"So, Aeris is down there?" she chirped.
"Possibly," said Leon, in dark tones.
"But there's a chance, right?"
Leon just looked down at the floor and the glowing dirt. Yuffie turned her beseeching violet eyes onto Cloud and he forced himself to stare back, not at the familiar writings on the walls or the glow of fake light from somewhere inside.
"There's always a chance Yuffie."
"That..That's all we need then!"
"But Yuffie.." he lifted his hand and watched her fall silent. Pleased secretly with how much the girl had grown up over the past years they had been gone, how much more mature she was and growing into the woman her youthful smile had promised, he continued. "That is not just Aeris down there. Sephiroth's inside her, making her do things she can't stop. The girl we know and love is buried somewhere deep inside, hidden inside all the dross that he forces on her body."
"But-!"
"What I'm saying is we should be careful."
Yuffie scowled and looked across at Leon who was slowly wandering into the tunnels. Then clenching her fists, one into her shorts and the other about the handle of her shuriken, she too moved deeper into the pits of the world. With little choice, Cloud followed.
Every step echoed.
Every breath hung pensive on the air.
It was like a dream, the hard mercenary noted, as he waded deeper into the shadows. They whispered about his legs and laughed in his ear almost mockingly. ~ Come home? ~ they seemed to jeer, but with a brush of his metallic hand, he ignored them. So what if he had compacted with dark powers? He was doing what was right now, and that was about all that mattered, after all.
The tunnel went on for a good half an hour, boring deeper and further down into the earth until eventually it yawned open with a blaze of green brilliance and strange heat. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he could make out the silhouette of a figure against the flames, hands held to a slim chest from sideways on.
"Aeris!" Yuffie yelled, and pushing heedlessly past and somehow too slippery for Leon's quick-thinking grab, she wormed her way across to the figure and grasped one arm in her hand.
The detonation shattered the fragile silence, and the roar of the lifestream echoed.
The ninja screamed and arched, her body blown backwards off it's feet and skidding along the floor until her head hit with a dull clunk off the mis-shappen walls of the centre of the world.
Leon put his hand on his gunblade and moved over to check if Yuffie was alright, a quick handsign confirming the girl was only unconcious.
Cloud stared deeply into the green fire, and as the shadow turned all her could see was a shower of pink.. and the bedazzling, sweet smile..
~*~
"What if... this is all we have left?"
He looked across at her with puzzled blue eyes, and she almost wanted to laugh. How sweet and innocent he seemed at times, with his puppy dog expression and little boy smile. The dappled sun of the trees under which they walked scattered strange highlights in his golden hair, making their way slowly through the forests and towards Junon.
"Why would this be all we have left?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid of waking up and finding this all isn't real," she said, with conviction behind her words.
"I'm real," Cloud replied stubbornly.
"How can you be so sure?"
The same confused expression but now perhaps a glimmer of understanding.
"I can't be.."
"One day I will be gone, Cloud. And on that day, you'll have to make a very important decision. What comes after I leave is all upto you.. do you stand up and fight in the only way you know how.. or do you run away?"
"Go away...?"
She laughed, and gave him a tiny push with a hand, bringing a small smile to the dour man's face, and a little more light into his life.
~*~
...and she cried on the inside, hidden away from the battle and reality...
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Chapter 18: Hidden
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"I hope I'm old, before I die..
I hope I live, to relive, the days gone by.."
~ Robbie Williams
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He woke slowly and not without a certain amount of pain in his chest.
It ached and stung, and the acrid scent of fire was in the air. It tingled like magic and wincing Leon moved his fingers over the sickly sweet smelling flesh and the tear through his clothing. It smouldered and reeked, but lifting his head up he could only see steps leading up and behind him, steps leading down into darkness.
A little way behind him and resting at a strange angle to the stonework was jammed his gunblade, the edge driven deeply into the step and wall.
Coughing in earnest, Leon got onto his knees and sat back, letting his legs and calves take his weight as his fingers poked the wound in his chest and he tried piecing together just what had happened to him and why he was no spread eagled on the floor with little recollection.
Aeris had attacked them.
Aeris had thrown a fireball, one of her more easily wielded spells.
Afraid and in awe as he was of magic, even from the time before he knew about the Sorceress' and SeeD's ultimate means to an end.. before then.. magic.. Primal and unleashed by the iron will of a small, delicate girl. If she had indeed attacked him and managed to evade Yuffie and Cid then she was most likely running down into her world by now, looking for whatever drew her.
For a moment his sulky nature balked after running behind her, but then after that elapse his kind and caring love for the willful and strange flower girl kicked in and he moved over slowly to pick up his gunblade.
Cid. Yuffie.
What had happened to them?
As his leather gloved hand grasped the hilt of the gunblade, he began levering himself up onto it and then brushed his dark hair from his smoked blue eyes. His left knee felt a little weak and apart from obvious bruises, cuts and the large burn, he felt no worse for wear.
Much more dangerous spells, after all, had been thrown at him during the second Sorceress' war, during the time when he and Rinoa, Zell, Irvine, Selphie and Quistis had stood up against the night and said in one loud voice, "no." Leon... Squall was a survivor, and whatever it meant he had to do to survive he would, and now he would also do whatever it took to bring Aeris back to reason and follow her.
Limping gently, he made his way up the stairs, feeling the flickering eyes of the wall torches and the ashes they scattered asunder over the room. Treading lightly past this, he made it up towards the large room where Aeris had remembered seeing, where the bridge between worlds existed.
The door swung slowly from it's hinges..
Covering his mouth to shield against the sickly smell he looked down in complete horror at the still body by his foot.
It's blond hair and strange shirt was almost unrecognisable from the back and as Leon turned it over with a hesitant toe the face revolved round. It was disgusting, a sickening mass of ruined flesh that still smoked. Bloodied cuts enamoured the face and ran in dark trails of burnt blood from the mouth, nose and eyes. Where the nose had once been was a charred lump of bone. The eyes had boiled in their sockets and clear liquid was still seeping from one. The throat looked almost as if the force of the spell had ripped his throat out, and swallowing Leon took a single step away from the corpse that had once been Cid Highwind.
Why?
Aeris wasn't like this, she was gentle and sweet and now she was on some kind of lunatic rampage.
A low cry made his head turn and shuffling past the corpse, he moved to the other body in the room.
It was Yuffie, curled over and holding her right leg, her hands trembled as they seemed to strain to keep bone and muscle together, her face all screwed up in pain. Shadows of raven fell over her cheekbones, and the usually happily smiling mouth was contorted in agony.
"Ow..ow.." she gasped between sobs, the tears cutting tracks in the soot.
"Hey, Yuffie.. it's me. Relax."
"Why did she.. ow ow.. Leon it hurts!"
Murmuring that he knew, he forced Yuffie to let go of her right leg and looked down on the broken shard of her shin bone that was thrust out through the skin, blood and torn muscle surrounding the terrible lesion. He wasn't what one would called skilled in the use of magic, but he did remember early field medical lessons.
Grapsing at the edges of his white vest, he tore off three strips of material, and then ignoring as best he could the yowls of pain from the poor ninja, he bound up the leg against one of the slats of the door.
"Cid?" she cried, holding onto her leg the instant his hands left.
Of course, the two had known one another a long time. "I'm sorry," was all he could say.
The look of swift pain welling up in the girls violet eyes, even in the half light of the room was more than he could bear. Looking away, Leon ruffled a hand through his hair and pretended he couldn't hear the broken pain in Yuffie's small whisperings.
"Why, Leon... why?"
"I don't know."
The silence was broken between them as it grew by another voice.
"I do."
He skittered a look up and over his shoulder towards the doorway. A man as if made from molten shadow stood there, a long crimson cloak about his squared shoulders, a torn set of purple pants tucked into army issue leather boots, bound with belt straps to mid calf. His shirt under was also dark in colour, a dark purple too and ribbed like old style polo vests. The cowl of the hood was torn and wrapped over the lower half of the shadowy face, the hand that was half dug into the wooden doorframe was metal. The right hand was not. Standing above all this, was a shock of pale blonde hair.
His cold blue eyes emerged from the light, over a straight nose and a cool expression. Then slowly as his toe hit the edge of Cid Highwind's body, he looked down and the pain mirrored from Yuffie's eyes emerged if briefly, only to be swallowed up again by determination or perhaps anger.
"Cid.." he murmured, then looked across at the ninja. "It's good to see you again, little thief."
"Cloud!" she cried out, in ragged, grief stricken tones.
Again, Leon knew what it was like to have his world crash down about him..
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
~ Did you ever dream of this power or place? ~
Her body was moving, she was vaguely aware, but horror superceded all else.
She had harmed the very ones she loved, the very ones she was trying to save.
Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks and in some small fashion she welcomed this end to ends, this chance to be free.. it would all end.
~ You don't have to be afraid any more, Aeris. ~
Her teeth gritted, as the cold snows howled endlessly about her. She was walking up from the entrance to Hollow Bastion which had been found in the Ancient's City, towards the Knowlespole. The damage of the world had run deep, so deep that no one had even really seen where the scars of the wounding had gone.
It ran under the crust and along the planet, causing wells of Mako energy, or rather the Lifestream. It emerged as something dangerous to anything non Cetra. Here she was, in the freezing light of dim day, her footprints swallowed up behind her by the screaming cold.
Why couldn't she wake up?
She wasn't afraid anymore...
~ Good.. good.. ~
She had nothing left to lose now, after all.
So saying, she formulated the only plan she could, and prayed whole heartedly that the Planet forgave her.. someone had to.
Hidden in the winds, she trudged onwards.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Cloud nodded, as he held Yuffie in his arms.
The girl's leg was too damaged for her to walk no matter what the case and Cloud too, like Leon, was less versed in magic than most and the ninja's mind was too clouded with pain for her to even muster the will to create magic. The materia pouch hung useless for the time being at her side.
As Yuffie clung to him, walking down the bridge between worlds, to his homeworld, the ex-Soldier couldn't help but marvel at events. Yuffie and Leon alive and Aeris, just missed by him. But the dark news they told him had only affirmed his suspicions.
Seph was controlling Aeris.
It was like working against a madman with only one thing on his mind for all eternity, to become a God by infusing with the lifeforce of the planet itself. In essence it made Sephiroth no better than the Heartless himself. It lowered him to their level. Rather then be the one to suggest it however, he had kept his peace and travelled after him like a shade ever lurking after light.
This time he had to put the madman to rest.
He had to end it all.
Leon walked in stony silence beside him, leather gloved hands tucked into baggy jean pockets. His denim coat was high waisted and trimmed in red with silvery stitching. Under it he wore a torn white shirt, spattered with burnholes and the blood of his own wound which he didn't speak about. But the man had a pensive expression, as if waiting for the world to shatter.
Cloud had a very good idea what was going on.
~ She doesn't know the spells she makes just by breathing. ~
Aeris, of course. The slender girl with her charismatic smile and effervescent nature was wild and gentle at the same time and the confusing mixture of seduction and sweetness, was enough to reel a man in, or send him crazy. What made it worse was the fact she was always blithely unaware of what she did to men.
~She was always much more involved in the Planet. In what she could do for our future.. ~
His blue eyes slid to Leon's grim mask.
~ But like him, I only wanted one future.. With her. ~
He sighed, looking past those he walked with and his mind settling into an unnerving state of calm. Lights and phantasms passed him by and for a moment, he found himself thinking of the past.. of where it had all gone wrong..
~*~
There was only the faintest of whispers at first, teasing over his numb senses and the daring of the dark into which he had spiralled hours previously. There was a strange deadening of limbs, as the whispering continued, soft and sweet across his flash burnt brain.
"Cloud, can you hear me?"
He turned over in pain, there was definitely a bed under him for a moment but then even that faded as he hung weightless in the air of his own dreamscape and awaited his words and her words. All that existed was here and now.
"Yeah.. I can hear you, sorry for what happened."
"Don't worry about it.."
He opened his eyes, and took in a slow breath. The world was beautiful.
He was stood in a glade of trees that offered shade and canopy overhead in a twisting of limbs and leaves, their bodies bent and smiling down in gemlike effervesence. Leaves like shining slivers of sapphire let in rays of a pale sun, the chill of some wind that brought with it only freshness and magic, tingling down his senses. The ground was soft packed dirt with grass growing everywhere and somewhere overhead he could swear he heard spirits chittering happily.
"I can't help it.." he replied miserably.
The temple. The Materia. The wounding and the beating.
All his fault, all his own damned fault.
"Then, why don't you really worry about it?" she appeared.
Unbroken and unbruised, her form straight but slender in the rise and fall of the dappled sunshine and now more than ever he felt irrevocably drawn to her, to her spirit. Something would always connect him to her, and unwittingly he reached out to her, even as she turned her face towards him and smiled.
That sweet smile, surrounded by the falls of golden brown hair and the light dancing in her bright green eyes. So wild and fey and not meant for this world, this life and violence. "And let me take care of you, so you don't have a breakdown.. okay?"
He put a hand on his hip, unsurprised when she doubled back and vanished behind another tree, less surprised that here he wore his usual clothes. His self made raiment against the world and memories he would rather forget. His bright blue eyes took in the wood and then with curiosity leaking through his voice, he said, "what is this place?"
She was there again, stepping out infront of him like a ghost with her thoughtful expression on her face, as her feet settled soundlessly on the floor. "This forests leads to the City of the Ancients, and is called the Sleeping Forest. It's only a matter of time until Sephiroth uses Meteor.. that's why I'm going to protect it, only a survivor of the Cetra, like me, can do it."
Her expression turned beautiful and melancholy. He had a thousand questions. Protect what? Why you? Was she leaving?
"This secret is up there, or at least it should be. It feels like I'm being led, drawn by something.." she took one last look at him and a whole world of compassion was in them.
Never had the urge to reach out and hold her there been this strong before..
Never.
He lifted his hand as she lifted hers, and waved with a sweet and upbeat smile.
"Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back, when this is all over.."
She turned and left, running down towards destiny and cruel fate that would reave her from him eventually, and with tears on his face he reached out in desperation, "Aeris!!!"
~*~
"...Aeris," he said under his breath, and look past shards of blond hair and down towards the world.
Perhaps this time it would all be different, he would make it different no matter what she wanted or thought was going to happen. Even if he was broken and too damaged for her now.. she would have Leon and Yuffie and a world to call her own.. a new life.
A new start.
That was what she needed, not a haunting reminder of her bloody past..
Nodding and ignoring the odd looks he got from Leon and Yuffie, he stopped by the end of the pathway and looked out over the last city he had imagined he would ever come to.
Spreading an arm with no amount of bitterness hidden in his voice, he said in soft undertones, "Welcome, to the City of the Ancients.."
Echoing, his voice ran about the city and haunted where Aeris had stepped, like cruel and hunting magic.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A day passed and relentlessly they tracked him/her.
But he had a plan, ignoring the wails of fury from inside, the unfocused anger and magic.
Deep inside the Labyrinth of fallen rooms, corridors and strange temples to dark powers that made up the epi-centre of the wound of the planet, he waited and waited. His laughter was soft, for so close now was his goal was in sight, in touching distance..
HE would be a god.. and finally everything would be as Mother promised.
But deep inside, he was careless.. and she kept beating..
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"How much further?" asked the weary girl, pushing her lank hair behind an ear and then adjusting the strip of material that lanced over her forehead and kept some of her unruly mop from falling in her eyes. Her already shoddy clothes were ripped in several places from the hazardous climb into the Knowlespole centre, where it had all caved in due to tremors and the announcment of Holy rushing up from the Planet's core.
Leon and Cloud were in no better state.
Cloud's trousers were badly torn, one leg almost non existant and showing scars through it, his cloak clawed and ripped half to shreds. His hair was just about managing it's spiky behaviour but it might have been due to the fact that Cloud kept running a hand over it, old pride helping maintain it. The bandages over the buster sword were now blood soaked and only just clinging to the sharp blade.
Leon had abandoned his undershirt a while back in favour of bandages in the Snow Village, where Yuffie had also been cured by a local materia dealer and his natural talent with the magic. Back on track, Leon had later stumbled unawares over the unfamiliar terrain and landed headlong into a snowdrift and a hidden rock which has gashed his eyebrow and left him with a wound that may eventually scar him.
He had grumbled about more scars, in addition to his facial one, as they had climbed in.
The centre of the Knowlespole was much different to what Cloud remembered.
When he and his friends had come through here last, it had been a winding cave of pockmarked holes and strange signs, letters written in Cetra and other dead tongues as mankind had evolved. Strange symbols and drawings were the epitome of the landscape and half ruined altars to the Cetra powers.
He remembered the magic.
He remembered the voices.
As his eyes focused off into the distance, Leon began walking about the thin ledge carefully and looking down and under it.
They were lodged on the thin ledge where he had last been inside the wound, where he and Tifa had checked one another for wounds and waved across to his friends. Unbidden, those sharp feelings rose in his throat. Would he never be free of it?
His clarity of recall painted them in, Cid trying to start the ship and acrid odour of petrol and strange fluids on the air, the tang of blood tasted in his torn mouth as he watched in desperation, lifting his cloak to hide the wounds thereabouts. The vision of Nanaki standing true and proud at Cosmo Canyon, giving Cloud and his friends time to get away from the world, his red fur gleaming like an abandoned sunset. The violent mysteries of Vincent and how he had roared in rage and set his inner demons loose, the blood and violence but through it all they had kept moving to the City and the gateway.
To where Aeris would be.
In the end, so many had died, so many innocents and because of one man's insane addiction to power.
"Hey, there's a hole here."
Lifting his head at the voice, Cloud shifted his eyes across to where Leon was knelt over the opening, his leather covered hands gripping the boulder that had slid over it, "Lend me a hand," he grunted.
Yuffie stepped hesitantly forward but Cloud shook his head and instead let her hold his sword. She took it with delicate and careful hands, wincing at the blood. But the ex-soldier pretended not to notice and moved towards the boulder, and pressed his fingers round the smoothed edges. In concert with the underestimated strength of the taller man, Leon, the two slowly shifted the boulder, and with momentum it rolled aside easily to show a strange passage cut into the rockface.
It looked almost entirely natural with strange luminescence coming from the walls, and a soft springy dirt packed underfoot. For a second it almost looked like something Cloud recognised, then shaking his head he reclaimed his sword from Yuffie who slipped past the two men as they stared.
"So, Aeris is down there?" she chirped.
"Possibly," said Leon, in dark tones.
"But there's a chance, right?"
Leon just looked down at the floor and the glowing dirt. Yuffie turned her beseeching violet eyes onto Cloud and he forced himself to stare back, not at the familiar writings on the walls or the glow of fake light from somewhere inside.
"There's always a chance Yuffie."
"That..That's all we need then!"
"But Yuffie.." he lifted his hand and watched her fall silent. Pleased secretly with how much the girl had grown up over the past years they had been gone, how much more mature she was and growing into the woman her youthful smile had promised, he continued. "That is not just Aeris down there. Sephiroth's inside her, making her do things she can't stop. The girl we know and love is buried somewhere deep inside, hidden inside all the dross that he forces on her body."
"But-!"
"What I'm saying is we should be careful."
Yuffie scowled and looked across at Leon who was slowly wandering into the tunnels. Then clenching her fists, one into her shorts and the other about the handle of her shuriken, she too moved deeper into the pits of the world. With little choice, Cloud followed.
Every step echoed.
Every breath hung pensive on the air.
It was like a dream, the hard mercenary noted, as he waded deeper into the shadows. They whispered about his legs and laughed in his ear almost mockingly. ~ Come home? ~ they seemed to jeer, but with a brush of his metallic hand, he ignored them. So what if he had compacted with dark powers? He was doing what was right now, and that was about all that mattered, after all.
The tunnel went on for a good half an hour, boring deeper and further down into the earth until eventually it yawned open with a blaze of green brilliance and strange heat. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he could make out the silhouette of a figure against the flames, hands held to a slim chest from sideways on.
"Aeris!" Yuffie yelled, and pushing heedlessly past and somehow too slippery for Leon's quick-thinking grab, she wormed her way across to the figure and grasped one arm in her hand.
The detonation shattered the fragile silence, and the roar of the lifestream echoed.
The ninja screamed and arched, her body blown backwards off it's feet and skidding along the floor until her head hit with a dull clunk off the mis-shappen walls of the centre of the world.
Leon put his hand on his gunblade and moved over to check if Yuffie was alright, a quick handsign confirming the girl was only unconcious.
Cloud stared deeply into the green fire, and as the shadow turned all her could see was a shower of pink.. and the bedazzling, sweet smile..
~*~
"What if... this is all we have left?"
He looked across at her with puzzled blue eyes, and she almost wanted to laugh. How sweet and innocent he seemed at times, with his puppy dog expression and little boy smile. The dappled sun of the trees under which they walked scattered strange highlights in his golden hair, making their way slowly through the forests and towards Junon.
"Why would this be all we have left?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid of waking up and finding this all isn't real," she said, with conviction behind her words.
"I'm real," Cloud replied stubbornly.
"How can you be so sure?"
The same confused expression but now perhaps a glimmer of understanding.
"I can't be.."
"One day I will be gone, Cloud. And on that day, you'll have to make a very important decision. What comes after I leave is all upto you.. do you stand up and fight in the only way you know how.. or do you run away?"
"Go away...?"
She laughed, and gave him a tiny push with a hand, bringing a small smile to the dour man's face, and a little more light into his life.
~*~
...and she cried on the inside, hidden away from the battle and reality...