By: Zhak!
Most disclaimers are found at the first chapter. I also have a new disclaimer: I did not make up the fairy tales that I'm about to "make baboy" or parodize. The original "Rapunzel" story was originally written by Grimm, according to a source.
Warnings: AU (doi!), slight OOC, incredible amounts of violence, slight nudity. Gah, that's a lot.
Once upon a time, in the City of Midgar… there lived a husband and a wife.
"Good morning, Ifalna. How are you feeling today?"
A woman named Ifalna opens one weary eye as she lay on her bed. As her eyesight focuses, she sees his unkempt black hair, his eyes shining behind his eyeglasses, and his form as it wears a white laboratory coat. "Gast…" she murmurs, struggling to get up.
Her husband, Gast, stops her. "Ifalna, don't get up. You're still weak… the tests we performed on you did a good job on weakening you." He sighs as she lay back on her pillows again. "I knew it was a bad idea, letting you go to the laboratory with me."
She laughs. "No, don't worry about me. I was the one who volunteered; anyway… it's for the greater good, right? Besides, Dr. Hojo reassured me that I'll be fine in a week or so…"
He laughs. "You trust Dr. Hojo's diagnosis?"
"Well… ShinRa hired him. His diagnoses should be trusted if he's that good."
"He's a mad scientist."
"And so are you, dear," Ifalna smiles at him teasingly.
Gast smiles back. "Anyway… if you get hungry, that's your breakfast over there at the side table," he points to a tray with a plate of ham and eggs, a glass of juice, and a few slices of toast. He kisses her forehead. "Well… I'll see you later, at my lunch break?"
"Why bother? I'll be fine."
"No… you won't be able to stand up… maybe I'll ask for a Turk or somebody to watch over you…" he says, buttoning his shirt.
"Please, Gast… I don't like the Turks. Don't worry, by lunchtime, I'll be strong enough to stand up," she says, smiling brightly at him.
He hesitates. "Well… alright… I'll be seeing you later."
"Okay. Don't forget your ID. And…"
"Yeah," he goes near her again and pats her belly. "Bye, Aerith. I'll be seeing you later, too."
Ifalna's promise to Gast that she'll be able to stand up by lunchtime isn't fulfilled… everytime she tries to sit up, her head spins and if she tries harder to be able to stand up, she blacks out and faints. Her husband Gast begins to worry after 7 days when she does not recover from her state. And after those seven days… she gets worse. She doesn't have the strength to eat anymore, and at times, she doesn't even have the strength to speak. Prof. Gast examines her health… finds out that because of the constant tests that Dr. Hojo performed on her, she is deteriorating inside out.
Gast finds a way to deal with her disease, however… he just has to get a few medicines from Dr. Hojo's laboratory. Even if he knows that only Dr. Hojo is allowed to touch those precious medicines, he tries his luck at asking for permission.
However, the deal that he and Dr. Hojo agrees upon was a very strange one…
"Ah, yes… Gast, is it? I am sorry… Professor Gast," says the doctor, drumming his fingers together. Shadows cover his face, making his eyes disappear behind his eyeglasses. "Yes… I believe that I can allow you in my special stock of chemicals… but…"
"Wait… let me ask you something first, Professor. Your wife—she is the special one, yes? The one who volunteered to be a subject of our tests regarding the Promised Land."
"Well… yes, Dr. Hojo. Ifalna is the Ancient."
"And I understand she is pregnant? And expecting a daughter?"
"Yes sir."
Hojo pauses for a few moments as if he is judging his decision very carefully… a matter of life and death? Will it mean... his life? The other doctor swallows hard. He knows that Dr. Hojo is known for making cadavers out of his colleagues. Gast, standing there in front of him in his office, is suddenly very aware of his knees shaking. Finally, he hears the doctor speak.
"Yes… I believe that I can allow you in my special stock of chemicals," Hojo repeats, "if you agree to hand me your first child after she is born."
Gast freezes. His voice sounds weak when he said, "Pardon?"
Hojo smiles at him sinisterly. "You heard me correctly, Professor."
Gast frowns. "I'm sorry, sir… but I can't allow that."
The other doctor laughs. "Those medicines you want aren't found anywhere else in the Planet, Professor Gast. They are very expensive, very dangerous, and needs tremendous skill in using. I am the only one who was allowed by the President to touch them. So, if you want to use them for your wife… you have to give me something in return."
"I am not giving my daughter for those medicines, Dr. Hojo," Gast replies sternly.
Hojo shrugs. "It's your loss. You don't give her the medicines she needs, her child will die first, and eventually, so will she. ShinRa Labs will have to cancel all of its experiments regarding the Promised Land… because without the specimen, we are not going anywhere. You will be alone and unemployed, and you will have to carry the burden of your guilt. Do you want that? Your wife will die, your child will die, and your promise of contributing your knowledge of science for 'the greater good' won't be fulfilled… Tsk, tsk. I suggest you think first, Professor."
"But it is your experiments that got her into this condition in the first place, Dr. Hojo!"
"So it will be all my fault if she dies? Remember, Professor, she is the one who volunteered. Dr. Lucrecia also warned her about such things happening, but she still went through with it…"
"You should have known that you were risking her life when you did those tests—"
"We all have to take risks, Professor… for the greater good," Hojo sneers at him. "And now that you are given a chance to cure her… will you take it?"
Gast goes home shaken, but he has the medicines in hand. Silently, he heals Ifalna, and in a matter of days, she turns back to her old self.
A few months later, a baby girl is born to them. But Ifalna has to trade her life for Aerith's during childbirth. She dies not knowing that her child is taken away from her…Regretfully, Gast personally hands baby Aerith into Hojo's waiting arms.
Aerith wouldn't remember in the years that followed, but she cries the loudest when her own father had to give her away to the creepy-looking stranger…
---
In the same building, at a different time, a different story begins to unfold. The night sky twinkles with stars. The city sleeps. And a soldier named Cloud Strife suffers.
"Hey, Cloud."
"Yeah, Zack?"
"You never have time to relax, do you? You look stressed out."
"Well… I gotta work hard… if I wanna be a First-Class SOLDIER in General Sephiroth's army."
"Why do you wanna be a First-Class SOLDIER anyway? It's not such a big deal like they say…"
"… I have a reputation to live up to."
"Don't tell me—people back home, right? That's what they all say."
"Yeah."
"Hmm… you really need to relax, man. Maybe if you go out drinking sometime. We could unwind together, what do you say?"
"…."
"No, I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"General Sephiroth doesn't allow us to go out late at night. Training starts early in the morning and ends at dinner time. We won't have the time to unwind."
"Well… you need it. They don't let uptight people into First Class."
"What do you think I should do about it, then?" Cloud snaps in annoyance, glaring at Zack, who peers at him from the top bunk.
Zack shrugs upside-down. "Maybe you could… sneak out? It's not so bad… you'll have a great time, plus you get to practice your stealth attacking, too. And judging from our training sessions… you need to work on that." He grins.
The blonde laughs sarcastically. "Zack… all floors need a key-card to get past… and I can't use the elevator, can I? Now, if I could jump out the window from the 57th floor, I could go drinking, like you said."
"So, get a key-card."
"Only ShinRa executives get key-cards."
"Sez who? Come over here. I'll show ya something." Cloud raises an eyebrow. He jumps up on Zack's bed as he gets something from under his pillow. The black-haired guy comes up with a small, flat, shiny thing—kind of like a credit card. "Et voila. Key card," Zack says proudly, holding it out to him.
Cloud takes it from Zack and examines it closely. It is gold with strange lines all over it, kind of like a larger SIM card. It is unmarked, save for a few numbers (042431) and a sequence of letters—AVALANCHE. "AVALANCHE? Where'd you get this, Zack?"
He shrugs again. "You know AVALANCHE is a rebel group… but they're not very good ones as of now. SOLDIER catches a few members frequently. I was one of the guys who dragged the poor guy into the interrogation chambers in Junon. That was one of his possessions… I pocketed it, but don't tell anyone!" he explains with a wink.
"So now you're letting me use this?"
"Well, sure. Try it out, because I haven't."
---
Cloud seriously thinks about using the key-card that Zack has given him. In a fit of insanity one night, he suddenly thinks, Why the hell not? I'm not any better as a low-ranking SOLDIER anyway, might as well get my ass fired.
While everybody else sleeps (including Zack), Cloud silently walks out of the room and out onto the hallway.
Deserted, the white halls feel cold and hostile. In his SOLDIER uniform, he tries his hardest not to make any stepping noises as he runs.
Other SOLDIERS on duty are awake, ever vigil and standing in their posts, making passing by impossible. Cloud considers crawling on the ceiling like a spider to avoid being seen, but he realizes that he can't get away with that, and so he tries to find alternate routes around the guards. Finding none that would lead him downstairs, he keeps wandering silently around the halls, eventually deciding to try finding paths upstairs. A few floors up, and he realizes that he's lost. The floors look slightly different than the ones downstairs. Nevertheless, he keeps going upstairs, instantly realizing that there are less guards upstairs.
The next thing he knows, he is already at the 67th floor.
Cloud adjusts his eyes in the dark of the hallway. It is completely deserted. No guards, and no other people for that matter. In fact, the only sign of life that is on that floor is light coming from one of the rooms…
Oddly calm, Cloud approaches the lighted room and inserts the key-card in the slot…
---
The room is obsessively clean. The silence that eternally hung in the atmosphere is barely interrupted by the constant beeping of the machinery… machinery that determines life in a body or lack thereof.
In the center of the room is a large, glass chamber. A woman's naked body floats in liquid within, wires and hair dangling about her, making her look strangely imprisoned, like an unwanted child trapped in her mother's womb…
Cloud stares at her. He doesn't realize it for himself, but he is slowly approaching this woman…
Her hair is brown, wavy, unnaturally long it wraps around her covers her body her arms her legs her breasts one moment and uncovers in another the long wavy locks being played by the liquid bubbles sprouting like flowers he has seen before somewhere in Sector 5
He is close to her now. His blue eyes level with her closed ones outside the glass. He barely notices a scar on her abdomen. Her beautiful corpse mesmerizes him—he realizes this when he holds up one hand to touch the glass and hopes she wakes up…
Her eyes open.
His eyes widen as she starts to choke.
---
Dr. Hojo runs in the room as soon as the machinery started bleeping urgently.
The glass prison cracks. Water gushes out and spreads on the obsessively clean floor. The woman crashes on the floor, writhing, choking on the air in the laboratory. She tries to shriek, but a horrible croaking sound comes out of her throat instead.
The doctor smiles. His eyeglasses shine sinisterly. He takes off his white laboratory coat and puts it on the woman's shoulders. For a moment, he acts like a father to her. "There, there, there, my child. Try to breathe first."
The girl shakes as she stands up, wrapping the coat around her naked body. "Ah-ah-ah…" she croaks. Hojo puts an arm around her shoulder.
"What did I tell you? You'll die again if you try to learn how to talk and breathe at the same time. Just calm down for a while…"
The girl breathes in the air deeply. Her gasps eventually calm down. She stops shaking after a minute. "There… see, you are alive again, Aerith."
Her face is still in the same, shocked expression as when she got out of her prison. "Ae… rith?" she gasps out.
"Yes… you're remembering again. I'll give you a few minutes to remember all the bad things you did," Hojo sneers at her.
This naked, resurrected girl named Aerith does what her doctor says and tries to remember.
Broken glass cars motorcycles blue suits flowers Church Sectors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 rebels bayonets knives swords flowers Church flowers Sector 5 flowers…
… blue eyes. She remembers blue eyes staring intensely at her.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Poor dear. You tried to escape from ShinRa again, you bad girl. Father had to send those mean nasty SOLDIERs after you… one of those idiots stabbed you in the gut… remember now? You died in the Church… but luckily, Father knows how to revive dead things with a bit of scientific know-how. Too bad…" Hojo pats her wet hair. "You've been drifting from life and death in that glass chamber over there for a month now… your fingernails and hair won't stop growing."
Aerith stares at her nails and notices that they are, indeed, longer. Her voice returns to the way it is before she was imprisoned. "Don't refer to yourself as my father…" Her voice is low, reserved, uncharacteristically angry.
"And why not? I am the one who took care of you ever since you were born. I have every right to call you mine."
"You stole me from my parents."
Hojo smiles evilly. "Don't say that. I only did it for the greater good. You are special to the Planet. You are special to me," he leads her outside the room. "Now, I suggest you get dressed. You are indecently exposed." He leads her out of the room. Save for the echoes of their footsteps and the dropping of water, the world inside the room is silent again.
The soldier named Cloud stares at the woman he is mesmerized with, stares at her long hair trailing on the floor, leaving a path of water-drops. "Aerith," her name echoes in his brain.
---
"A life of solitary confinement again. I come out only when it is time for needles to be inserted in my body again, or for wires attached to my veins, or for a contraption to try to probe in my brain. Nothing ever works, nothing is ever accomplished. They shall never know where the Promised Land is."
She begins braiding her hair. She faces the mirror, a forlorn face stares back at her. Desperate. Hopeless.
"Dr. Hojo himself said it. More than 50 years… maybe he said 100 years of research is needed for them to find the Promised Land. ShinRa and his greed… my suffering is caused by his constant lust for money."
She realizes that her hair is too long. She turns around and looks around the room, finding a place where a pair of scissors may be kept.
"I will try to escape from this hell again… If only. I want to die… I would rather die than live in this city, like a princess trapped haplessly in the highest tower."
No scissors are in the room. Dr. Hojo has trapped her in a room with nothing but a bed, a table, a chair and a mirror. There is also a bathroom somewhere. There are no windows at all in the room.
"Dr. Hojo himself said it. No matter how many times I die, he can always revive me as long as ShinRa Labs and his precious scientific know-how exists."
"A princess trapped. Do I need a prince to escape from this hell?"
Despite herself, she smiles. Green eyes lose their luminosity.
After what seemed like an eternity of twisting handfuls of hair, she finishes. Her braids are so long, they trail behind her as she walks. She walks back and forth in her room, watching with mild amusement as her hair drags on the floor.
She wants to get out from her room and see her hair drag against the obsessively clean hallways of the ShinRa building. But her room needs a key from the outside and the inside to be opened.
---
"So, Cloud, have you used my present yet?"
"Ah… sure. Had a great time."
"Yeah. I noticed the baggy eyes. Well, at least you were alert this morning. What did you do last night, anyway?"
"Er… nowhere special."
"Hah! If I know, you went in the HoneyBee Inn or something. I hope not, though. That's disgusting."
---
Cloud Strife desperately wants to see the girl named Aerith again. The image of her in her prison, inflorescences of bubbles floating from her nose, pale hands and limbs wrapped around in wires, a scarred abdomen, beautiful long hair floating about her… it will stick with him forever.
He decides that night—he will come for the girl again. He will try to find out everything about her. Everything.
For 7 nights, he sneaks up the 67th floor again. He comes at irregular times – first at 9.30 in the evening, then 10.32, then 10.22, then 11.23… He tries to find her in the laboratory, or search for the scientist with her.
7 nights of searching in vain. The trusted key-card glimmers faithfully each night.
At the eighth night, he goes up to the 67th floor and sees that the laboratory is lighted again. He fights the urge to run to it, however, and he waits in the shadows of the hallway for the scientist and his specimen to walk out of the room.
It was 12.43 in the morning. Shadows begin to block the bars of light from the laboratory. Cloud holds his breath.
"Child, we are making progress. You have cooperated marvelously in tonight's examinations," the man in a white coat says to the girl.
She is silent. She is wearing a red dress. Her arms are exposed. White bandages are taped at points where needles were formerly injected in.
They walk towards an unmarked door. The doctor inserts a key-card and it opens. He leads her inside.
"Now get some sleep. I and my team will be seeing you again tomorrow."
Cloud watches as the doctor steps out again. Dr. Hojo goes to the elevators and presses the down button. The soldier in the shadows waits for him to disappear behind the elevator doors before he moves.
Cloud holds his breath. A cold hand holds the key-card. Swallowing, he inserts the key card and turns the handle. The door clicks—the only sound in the barren hallway.
---
Aerith Gainsborough watches the shadows on the ceiling as she lay stiffly on her bed. She hums a song that is stuck to her memory for the moment. She does not look up when she hears the door click—she guesses that it is her 'father' Hojo, there to say such things to her as "I forgot to mention, child…" Details about the experiments of the next day. She closes her eyes sullenly.
Cloud Strife stares at the scenario he found in the room. The girl is lying on her bed. She stares at the ceiling, beautiful green eyes glowing in the darkness of the room. Her long, braided hair is sprawled on the covers of her bed and ends folded on the floor. A few moments of silence, then she breaks it with her voice—a soft, ethereal knife cutting through the dead air.
"You forgot to say something? I am listening," she says softly.
He finds himself at a loss for words. "I…" he stops. The different voice, the gentler tone made Aerith sit up in surprise from her bed. Her green eyes stare at him—surprised, shocked, or just curious? He didn't know.
The door closes behind him.
Aerith looks at him, head tilting. "How did you get here?"
Cloud shows her a key-card. "Not the professor's, but it works all the same," he says to her.
She narrows her eyes. Cloud freezes as she approaches him. Only the sounds of her light footsteps and her unnaturally long hair dragging on the floor are heard in the room. She raises her hand to touch his face softly. "I know you."
The SOLDIER nods.
"The man with blue eyes… you saw me in the laboratory that night, didn't you?"
"… I am sorry."
He swallows; his throat feels dry. "Do you… want anything from me?" she asks uneasily.
He shakes his head. "I'm not sure why I want to see you…" he begins. "But I'm here now. Aerith…" He feels her name on his mouth.
"Yes… I can see that." She smiles at him slowly. His blue eyes blink. He feels her hand against his cheek again.
"So… Cloud… your name is Cloud…"
And so the soldier becomes the specimen's nightly visitor—or rather, early morning visitor. She asks for the things he is able to see outside, as her room in the tower has no windows and she says she misses the feel of the sun on her face. He says that there is nothing to be missed in Midgar—the privileged enough to see the sun from above the plate wants nothing to do with it. They spend their nights like that—lying on her bed, staring at the shadows of the ceiling, listening to each other's low voices sounding so husky when the clock is past midnight. When they talk, she touches his hand. He feels pleasure when her nails slightly graze his skin.
Nobody notices the visits. Hojo, as well as Cloud's superiors in the army, are blissfully unaware of their nightly talks. Before they notice it, 7 months pass them by.
"I want to escape someday, Cloud."
"So do I. This city… or rather, ShinRa is killing both of us."
He strokes her long hair—the long locks that he is so fascinated with. She embraces him and feels his fingers lightly stroke her scalp.
She suddenly laughs. "If my hair were long enough, and if I had a window, you could use it as a ladder to go down… then maybe you could find a way to take me with you, and we'll get away from this place… like in that fairy tale."
Cloud laughs with her. "Maybe. Maybe I have a plan."
He soon leaves the room, promising to go back the next night. And in the familiar halls, he stealthily makes his way back to his room… unaware, though, of a slight shining in the shadows…
Bars of light from the laboratory makes the Doctor's eyeglasses shine.
---
It wasn't in the next night that Cloud decides that it was time for him and Aerith to escape…
That night, he runs in the shadows of the familiar hallway of the 67th floor… but this time, he has a sword with him.
The halls are silent. There were no bars of light shining from within the laboratory. The experiments are done for the night. He inserts the key-card and twists the doorknob to Aerith's room.
But what was waiting for him there isn't what he hoped for. But in a sense, he knew this wasn't going to be easy…
Dr. Hojo glares at him in the darkness of the room. "SOLDIER…" he mumbles with detest under his breath. He growls and lunges at Cloud who didn't have the time to dodge. JENOVA cells had strengthened the man.
Cloud feels Hojo's fingers tighten around his neck. He starts to choke. "Can't… breathe…" He struggles. They end up stumbling all over the hallway before finally crashing into the dark laboratory.
"SOLDIER scum! You have no right to lay a hand on my precious experiment—" the Doctor growls wildly, not letting go of Cloud's neck.
Cloud wills himself to use his foot to kick Dr. Hojo away from him. He breaks free and quickly gets his large sword and makes a slash across the doctor's body.
Aerith opens her eyes. That afternoon, she is injected by Dr. Hojo and then falls asleep.
And now that her eyes are open… she finds wires attached all over her body and that she lies alone in an examination room, the cold metal bed freezing her back… What time is it?
She feels pain as she pulls out the wires from her skin. Spots of red are all over her arms, her legs, her head. "Ah… ah… ah…" she croaks again. Shaking, she stands up and practically crawls on the floor in an attempt to get out of the examination room in the 67th floor laboratory.
Blood stains the obsessively clean white floor of the examination room. Strands of unnaturally long brown hair are left.
Cloud breathes as he looks over the mess he made of Hojo. The scientist didn't stop attacking him. He didn't pass out until he was terribly mutilated.
He turns when he hears croaks from behind him. He sees her crawling desperately on the floor. He rushes to her. "Aerith!"
"Cloud," she finds her voice at last, "Let's go."
They used the elevator to go to the ground floor. They run past the shouting, panicking guards. Cloud successfully finds a motorbike. He tells Aerith to hang on tightly as he starts it up.
They zoom away from the ShinRa building. The tension hangs in the night air as SOLDIERs in their own motorbikes and vehicles chase them. "Cloud… don't stop driving. Don't," Aerith mumbles weakly.
The roads in Sector 1 at that time of the morning aren't very crowded. The chase goes on. SOLDIERs threw grenades at them in an attempt to stop them, but nothing slows Cloud down.
"I won't."
Only General Sephiroth catches up to them on his motorbike. "Strife! Stop!" he growls.
"Don't…"
"I won't, Aerith," Cloud repeats as he tries to go faster.
"No!" Sephiroth brandishes his Masamune. He swings it towards the runaways. They duck, but Aerith's long hair was cut. She doesn't blink.
"Damn!" Cloud screams before Sephiroth makes his second move—a clean stab through Aerith's back. The sword pierces through her and wounds Cloud's side. Aerith screams and chokes.
"Aerith!"
She clings to him tighter. "Don't stop, Cloud!"
The road ends. They do not slow down. They fly through the air as a grenade makes it to them and explodes.
It was like watching a display of fireworks in midair. The night sky was tainted orange by the fire. Aerith Gainsborough loses consciousness, but does not let go of the soldier. Cloud Strife receives shrapnel in the eye. He is blind when they both fall to their deaths from the highest to the lowest sector.
---
Dr. Hojo recovers. He forces SOLDIER to find Aerith Gainsborough's corpse. They find it with exactly the same wound as when she previously died.
Cloud Strife's body is nowhere to be found. The mutilated motorbike is removed from Sector 7 to make people forget that anything happened that fateful morning.
---
A man with unkempt hair, shining eyes behind eyeglasses and a white coat cleans his hands. He lives alone in a house in Kalm. He had heard all about his daughter and how many times she had been killed already.
But he tries hard not to think about her. He is busy with a new project of his own…
Prof. Gast examines the man in a glass chamber in his home. He has blonde hair and his wounded eyes are covered with cloth. He floats in liquid, pale hands and limbs wrapped in wires. Bubbles float from his nose, making one think of flowers everytime they rise.
-end-
Author's notes: I watched Three a few days ago. I also watched RE: Apocalypse a few weeks ago. I don't know. Must be a side effect or something.
Verb Tenses are my worst enemy.
Coming up next: Princess on the Pea featuring Tifa Lockheart. It's not the story you once knew, I promise.