Chapter 22!
Disclaimer—FF7 and any other FF stories I do, well hey, you get the idea. Please do not use my character Harper unless you've asked me and I've said yes, as she is my char. and I'm very attached to my creations.
Note—Let's hope this doesn't take the amount of time the other did and is three times as long and much much much better. Not sure about that though, because I'm having a pretty bad week.
Chapter 22.
So, the Forgotten Capitol is the "final destination", I thought as I strolled the halls absent mindedly. I still hadn't found the others and was getting rather bored. Cloud came to mind, and Aeris. Was she still here?
I finally came out of the maze of halls and (what looked like) townhouses and was looking at a huge pedestal in the middle of a lake. A flood of stories bubbled to surface and play out right in front of my eyes. I saw ghost forms of Cloud, Yuffie, and Cid standing beside me looking toward Aeris, who was on the pedestal. Cloud rushed toward her, jumping from rock to rock, but as he stepped in front of Aeris he lost control of himself and raised his sword to strike at her. Then she looked up at him and the spell was broken. Cloud was happy to have found her again, but not for long as Sephiroth descended—I cut it off instantly. That wasn't the real Sephiroth. I didn't want to remember him like that.
For some reason I went up to the place Aeris died and sat against a wall hoping for a moment that I wouldn't find anyone else in the Forgotten Capitol ;that I could just be left alone now that I wasn't in a very good mood. Why I wasn't, I didn't know then. But soon, being in a bad, sleepy mood, I fell asleep again.
"Harper."
"What." I was agitated. I hadn't wanted to be found, much less woken up when I was.
"You..."
I woke with a start, and yet, wasn't woken at all. I opened my eyes to the world of black again. The same world I visited while I had been knocked out in Cosmo Canyon.
"Have you found them to be different than you thought?" Sephiroth asked as he emerged from behind the invisible veil of darkness.
"Ha. Maybe. I'd like to have an explanation for how I got here and remember nothing," I said, still agitated that I was being talked to when I was asleep.
"They'll tell you if you ask them, I'm sure. Why wouldn't they?" he asked, brushing a lock of hair from his line of view.
I noticed then what I hadn't in the Canyon: here he didn't look as sickly as Cloud had painted him. Maybe it was the absence of Jenova, or maybe it was my own mind playing tricks on me, making me see what I wanted to see. "Maybe they wouldn't answer because they don't really trust me...?"
"And what makes you think that?"
It was maddening how he was making me figure it all out on my own, but I suppose he was only following rules and probably coming very close to breaking many of them. I looked up at him again and said slowly, "The fact that I was put to sleep for the ride here makes it very clear that they don't trust me. It also makes me trust them a lot less."
Sephiroth began laughing a little bit, and I joined him only to find my thoughts clamped on one thing only. Home... My home. Where was it now? How could I possibly go back to Cloud and Midgar, and there was no way I was going to stay with these three if anything else happened. Then suddenly, I couldn't even remember why I'd left in the first place...
Seeming to read my mind, Sephiroth sat on his heels and looked at me with a simple expression. "Why did you leave in the first place, Harper?"
I met his gaze and scrambled for words. The first thing that came to mind was "because of you!" but then I reconsidered and didn't say it. "Because... because I thought that..." my ears burned with embarrassment and sadness as tears suddenly sprang up. Sephiroth put a hand on my shoulder and lifted my chin with his fingertips. "Because I thought that Vincent hated me because I was your daughter."
He pushed hair away from my face with a hand and looked at me with a smile. "Now, Valentine's better than that, you know that...somewhere in here," he tapped my head, "...and in here," he pointed to my heart.
I shook my head. "No...you should have seen the look on his face when I told him. He..."
"Sshhh..."
I cried the rest of the time that was spent between worlds.
When finally I came out of that place I found that I had curled up with my knees hugged to my chest. And I had really been crying. I was relieved though, to find that no one was there watching me. Neither Kadaj, Yazoo, nor Loz had found me that I could tell, and if they had, I was thankful that they at least had the decency not to disturb me. As I fully joined the waking world the meeting with Sephiroth seemed but a dream and I readily convinced myself that I had not cried over Vincent. No.
I looked around a bit at the place I was in. It amazed me that there were no blood stains there. I thought there should have been, but then...nothing was making mush sense then. Eventually I left that part of the city and went exploring around the Forgotten Capitol. It was just as Cloud said it was, if not in worse shape now. Some of the buildings were barely recognizable even compared to the sketchy images I had of them. Then finally, as I rounded a corner and a spiral conch-like shell came into view, I spotted the three making their way from the direction I suppose "town" was in. Poor Loz was laden with shopping bags. "Hey!" I called. "You guys left me all by myself!" I jogged to meet them.
Kadaj only smiled. "We wanted to let you sleep."
I hardened my face. "Kadaj, you and I need to talk—"
"Yes. We do," he wasn't playing anymore, and neither was I.
Silently I took a number of bags from Loz and walked on ahead of them accompanied only by my thoughts. Grim thoughts as they were, they were better company than the others were. All the men did for me that day was confuse me and make me wonder what was going on behind all the smiles. They also made me wonder why I'd left Midgar in the first place.
That day, a lot of things started falling out of place. For instance it seemed as if for the first time I realized just how good I had it back at the shop. Cloud and Tifa had barely known me when I showed up at their door asking for a place to stay. Now I thought that it was only because they needed the money from renting the extra room out. Then that idea fell out when I remembered they hadn't made me pay the rent. I shook my head in frustration. Cloud was always confusing in person; it didn't really surprise me that he was so in my thoughts also. Tifa was the one who was most apprehensive, but she had soon warmed up to me. Me: a complete stranger. Then, when I got to that part, I thought about why Cloud didn't push me out when he found out about Sephiroth. Of course...that didn't last long either when I remembered what he had said about 'our parents don't make us who we are.' Back when he said that, I had thought that he was convincing himself that I wasn't like Sephiroth. Now I realized that what he was really saying was that the actions of out parents don't have to govern how we are.
(Vincent)
I stayed the night at Shera's and thankfully wasn't given pink clothing to suffice for sleep attire. The next day at breakfast I asked her if she knew anything about where Harper and the others were headed.
"I surely do, Vincent," she answered happily. She'd been giggly since she figured out why I was after Harper. "They were careless enough to say that they were going up North, around Icicle they said. Your clothes are washed and dry..." she turned to me and smiled. "You can leave whenever you're ready. Don't wait on me!"
"Shera?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
"Any time!"
Needless to say, I finished eating, packed my things, and left shortly after. I left thinking that Cid might get his ship back sooner than anyone thought.
(Harper)
"First things first," I said to the other three around me. We all sat around the edges of the pedestal. "How.Did.I.Get.Into.These.Clothes?"
Yazoo chuckled but was silenced by a glare from me.
Loz spoke up, "Well we didn't change you ourselves if that's what you want to know. We got a woman from Icicle to do it instead."
"We knew you'd eat us if we did it," Kadaj pointed out.
"Got that right," I growled.
"What's wrong? There's something else obviously," Kadaj prodded.
"Nothing..." So I hadn't completely suppressed the feelings I'd gotten from the last meeting with Sephiroth... "No, something. Why wouldn't you tell me we were going to end up here, in the Forgotten Capitol? And why did I pass out in Shera's house?"
All three looked at me then, but Kadaj answered yet again, "We drugged you, that's how you got here. And...as to why we wouldn't tell you we were coming here...It wasn't because we didn't want Valentine following us. He'll do that on his own. We didn't want you calling anyone to get here before we did and could activate—"
"A plan," I cut him off as I crossed my arms. "A plan involving me."
Note: End chapter 22. Read and Review please. I'm too tired to poke fun at anyone tonight...it's 12:19 AM...g'night.