a/n: thank you for your kind reviews everyone. i can't tell you how much they mean to me and how much they motivate me. i'm so thankful for your feedback!
to the anonymous reader asking me where i get my chapter titles from: i was a latin student once upon a time and my chapter titles are adjectives with the -osus declension, the feminine form. why? that'll become clear later. ;)
Tseng brushed past him in the sixtieth floor hallway, brisk and in an uncharacteristic state of disarray. Strands of hair fell from his ponytail to hang in front of his wan face as he pressed his phone to his ear — he did not spare even a cordial glance in Sephiroth's direction, a fact that did not go unnoticed given his typical professional manners.
"...he's now affiliated with Aerith Gainsborough. The Cetra, yes. Fair was sighted in the slums…"
His voice dwindled to a distant echo as he turned the corner behind Sephiroth. The echo of his footsteps against the linoleum lingered and hung thickly in the air, taunting him with knowledge that Tseng possessed but he had not yet been afforded.
He walked into the elevator and mechanically swiped his key card, even as he wrestled the urge to follow Tseng wherever he'd been going. Thank the gods for the ironclad self-control that had been beaten into him.
Aerith Gainsborough. That had been a name lost to the annals of time, but it resounded rhythmically in his mind like a mantra and snared him in its dark undertow.
He lifted a finger to the glass wall of the elevator and traced lines between the lights that illuminated the sprawling city below, connecting fabricated dots. Where was she now? In the slums, yes, but where? Sector Five? Six, Seven, Eight? Slumping against a hut and sleeping, caked in filth? Forced to sell herself to the night? Where did she live? Where did she work? Who did she love? What had that little girl grown up to be? Kind and genuine, or bitter and vengeful toward those who wronged her?
A hundred questions darted through his mind, screaming for answers — and now, if his suspicions were correct, Zack Fair knew them.
The glass door receded as he reached the twentieth floor. As guileless as Fair was, Sephiroth knew better than to reveal a connection that could prove so costly to both himself and the girl. If Hojo had ever known or even suspected anything, he had never indicated as much. He would keep it that way.
Sephiroth stepped out into the hallway. The bland designs of each floor blended together at that point, blotches of pale blue and grey, rendering them indistinct. The monotony of the fluorescent lights, the linoleum — the resentment at being watched at every corner — it all had begun to kindle a fire in him, a fire that could raze Gaia to ashes if he allowed it. Shinra's prized possession could only leave its gilded cage to kill.
The sound of snapping plastic sliced through the air. He looked down into his hand; the key card was split in two.
He would get his answers from the boy.
"I don't know if I can make it, guys."
Yuffie comes to a halt and bends over, placing both hands on her knees. Her button nose is tinted red from the cold, contrasting with her pale cheeks.
The rest of them put on brave faces, but Aerith can see the effects of physical and emotional exhaustion written all over them. She's no exception, though perhaps for different reasons.
Cid glares at Yuffie, gritting his teeth and retreating further into his blue parka. "Sh-Shit...don't be such a whiner!"
"Don't tell me what to do!"
"Can you both sh...shut up? Y'all are giving me a m-migraine," Barret says, rubbing his hand furiously against his arm for warmth even through his coat.
She pants and slumps her shoulders. She's lost count of the hours they've spent trudging across the plains and slopes blanketed in snow.
"Should we split up into groups and look for a place where we can take a break?" Tifa asks.
"I don't know. If we did that and one group got in trouble, there wouldn't be an easy way to backtrack." Aerith rubs her mittened hand against her chin in thought.
Yuffie breathes rapidly into her hands, rubbing them together furiously. "I agree with that!"
"But let's stagger out so we're not in one big group. Three in the front, three in the middle, three in the back," Cloud says.
Aerith, Yuffie, and Cloud already informally comprise the first group in the front. The others stratify into their own groups behind them. Satisfied, Cloud motions for them to start moving again.
As they walk, she feels no closer to their indeterminate destination than she did a few hours ago. It's white upon white as far as the eye can see, marred only by the occasional silhouette of grey mountains situated behind a translucent curtain of haze.
"Are you okay, Cloud? You look pale," Aerith says, noting with grim displeasure the manner in which his lips seem to match his skin in hue.
An answer never comes from those lips — it's as though he didn't hear her at all. He staggers along silently while Yuffie mutters curses under her breath. His pace grows sluggish, ungainly, before he loses his footing and falls face first into the snow with a dull thud.
"Shit!" she shouts. They both stop in their tracks; Yuffie turns to look back at the others trailing behind them. They can't see past the veil of the blizzard to notice that Cloud has fallen, leaving the two of them to haul him up. She groans as she drapes one of Cloud's arms around her shoulder. "Ugh, this guy! You know what I told him back at that inn? To eat somethin' while he still could. And ya know what he did? He ate a whole lot of air."
"And he's wearing a jacket? Oh, Cloud, what are we going to do with you?" With an indignant pout, Aerith slides his other arm — surprisingly slender for someone in SOLDIER — around her shoulders so that he hangs limply between the two of them.
They wander, time melting into an amorphous abstraction, growing ever more anxious before Aerith spots something beyond the grey haze of the snowstorm. She squints and a faint yellow light comes into focus, several yards away, if she had to guess.
"Hey, do you see that light? I bet there's a house up there," Aerith says. She juts her finger toward the shadow of the house.
Her partner doesn't seem convinced. In fact, if she rolled her eyes any harder, they would tumble right out of her skull. "Yeah, right. As if anybody'd be crazy enough to live out here."
Aerith picks up her pace, forcing Yuffie to match her stride. The house comes into clearer focus and Yuffie straightens her back so abruptly that Cloud nearly slips from Aerith's grasp.
"If you say 'told you so,' I'm makin' off with this materia and never coming back."
They stagger up the shallow slope over to the front door. Aerith raps her clothed knuckles against the door three times and looks down at Cloud's pallid form, praying to whatever entity willing to listen that someone opens the damn door.
Nothing but the wind answers her knocks. Yuffie huffs and bangs her fist against the door, hollering, "Hey! I dunno who's in there, but you better come out and help us! We got fire materia and we're not afraid to use it!"
Aerith wilts. "I don't know how much goodwill that's going to get us."
Finally, a man opens the door, flooding them in warm, yellow light.
"Gods!" he cries, eyes wide. "Come in before you all freeze to death."
The sound of feet stomping through the snow approaches before they have the chance to cross the threshold. She turns to see Barret, joined by Tifa and Nanaki, balking at the sight of Cloud dangling between them.
"What the hell happened to 'im?" asks Barret.
"Hypothermia," the man says before Aerith has the opportunity to reply. "Let's thaw him out in front of the fire."
He ushers them into the modest cabin. It's claustrophobic and sparsely furnished, with a kitchenette in the corner of the room and a sofa and loveseat surrounding the fireplace.
"I'll bring a blanket for the boy," he says as he ascends the staircase to the right.
Bushy brows, steel blue eyes, a face etched with age. Shuttered away from the world, alone, at the precipice of the elements. She tenses and scans the house for any visible weapons.
While Yuffie and Aerith lay Cloud down by the fireplace, the last of their party join them, standing by the wall and allowing the furniture to go unoccupied.
"Y-You've gotta be kiddin' me." Cid's teeth continue to chatter, even after he closes the door behind him. "If this schmuck had just worn a real coat…"
"He's hardly more than a boy. Boys don't have much forethought," Vincent says blithely.
The staircase creaks and the man returns with the blanket. He spreads it out over Cloud, enveloping him, before turning to face them.
"Now that he's safe, I ought to introduce myself. My name is Holzoff. I've been living here for twenty years now, and if you all plan on heading north, you'd better listen to me."
He takes a seat at the edge of the sofa, placing his bony hands on his knees.
"It was thirty years ago when my friend — Yamski was his name — and I tried to climb the cliff," he begins, his eyes reflecting the crimson embers of the fire. "We weren't prepared at all. We never thought a place so cold could exist on this planet. Yamski was below me...he cut his own rope. I didn't even notice. When you're under that kind of stress, you don't even think about it. By the time I realized, it was too dangerous for me to try to go back and get his body."
A pregnant silence permeates the cabin. In her periphery, Barret's dark eyes glaze over.
"You don't fear death when you're young. Even if you know it might be coming, it doesn't seem like it's the end."
She grips the edge of the blanket, trying to let his words slide off her. Her chest throbs.
"So that's why I'm here now. It's to warn folks like you about what you're up against." Holzoff sweeps his gaze across all nine of them. "The first thing I can say is that you need to know what route you're taking. If you get lost, there's no coming back."
"We gathered as much," Vincent intones.
"I was going to suggest warming up when you get to the edge of a cliff, but that might not be necessary given the coats." He creases his thick brows as he appraises their group from head to toe. "It's good that you're actually dressed for the occasion. I've seen some real fools try to scale these cliffs with no protective gear."
"And they died," Yuffie says flatly.
Holzoff's gaze hardens. "Even the best prepared people sometimes never come back."
He rises to his feet. This must be what a funeral parlor feels like. They didn't have those in the slums — if the deceased was fortunate, their loved ones would find an isolated corner in the shadows and inter them however haphazardly, with nothing but fresh mounds of dirt to mark the makeshift graves. Most, however, were crudely cremated in open fires, where the outline of black bones was all that they left behind in this world. Even dead bodies were valued on the plates; while paging through a magazine at a vendor's stall, she saw a photograph of a Sector 3 graveyard carpeted with grass and festooned with headstones.
She brushes a strand of hair out of Cloud's face. She's already been buried in water and snow. Maybe fire and earth are next.
"Regardless, you all should rest before going back out there. I'll be upstairs if you need anything."
He stalks over to the staircase and climbs up with languid, deliberate steps. The wooden stairs, splintered from decades of use, creak under each footstep. It doesn't take long for her companions to surrender to sleep in the warmth of the crackling fire. Only Yuffie remains awake, arranging and rearranging materia on her shuriken as she leans against the wall.
"You heard him. You should get some rest," Aerith says lightly, shaking off the remnants of the morbid subject at hand from her mind. She meanders toward her and sits against the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest.
Yuffie plops down next to her and stretches her legs out. "Nah. I'm too worked up. For now, at least."
A companionable silence settles between them as the others sleep — Cloud on the blanket, Cid on the sofa, Tifa in the loveseat, the rest of them scattered on the floor. But silence invites the questions that the day leaves no room for.
"Hey, can I ask you something?"
"You already did," Yuffie says with a twinkle of mischief in her dark eyes. "But yeah, what is it?"
She hesitates. Is this the right time to broach the topic? Will there ever be a right time? For as resilient as Yuffie likes to fashion herself, her heart bears scars — just like the rest of them.
"You must have been little when the Wutai War happened. Do you remember anything from it?" she asks, plucking at the frayed threads lining the hem of her dress.
Yuffie purses her lips. Just as she did earlier that day, she produces a piece of materia from the clip on her shuriken and tosses it up into the air before snatching it again. She silently repeats the process for so long that Aerith begins to believe that she's intentionally ignoring her.
"You ever see a person die?" she finally asks.
"...I have," Aerith says quietly, gathering memories however unwillingly.
A man taking his last raspy breaths in an alleyway, sandwiched between garbage cans teeming with moldy fruit and yellowed newspapers. A woman running past the church, a scream ripping her lungs to shreds, before the unmistakable sound of blade driving into flesh tore through the air — twenty-one times over.
"Then you're halfway there." A sly but shallow smirk plays briefly on Yuffie's lips before fading, leaving an inscrutable expression in its wake. "Imagine that, but everywhere you turn. One person goes down in front of you, so you run away — you run home, and before you've made it there, a dozen more people drop like flies on the way. And the whole time you're scared shitless, absolutely shitless that you're next. It don't matter if you're a kid or if you're the daughter of someone real important. You're just a warm body."
She takes a shaky breath and keeps the materia in her hand, curling her digits around the orb until her knuckles go as white as her coat.
"I was eight years old. I lost some friends, you know. Shinra didn't care. Yeah, they didn't kill kids if they could help it — but war's fucking ugly, Aerith. I went into my friend's house during one of the worst days. I was trying to hide — stupid me! I knew something was up. The air was stale and the smell — Gods. I went into the kitchen and my friend and his mom were face down in a pool of their own blood. Shot to death. There for who knows how long. The bodies had started to rot." She crinkles her nose in disgust, even as tears threaten to spill from the trough of her eyes' waterline.
Aerith places a hand on the forearm of Yuffie's puffy coat as the latter pockets her materia and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
"And Sephiroth was there, right?"
"He was, and he killed people, make no damn mistake about that. But I don't blame him as much as I blame the people above him." Yuffie's voice is thick and watery; her nose reddens even more.
"But why? How can you not blame someone who chose to do that?" Bitterness creeps steadily into her voice like potent, pulsating poison.
Yuffie's eyes widen with incredulity.
"You don't get it, huh? Sephiroth's a murderer, but he's nothin' more than a puppet to Shinra. He was only fifteen or somethin' when he came to Wutai the first time. Every SOLDIER is a puppet, even the best ones," Yuffie says scornfully. "Truth is, we all suffer because of 'em…the big wigs, that is. Even shits like Sephiroth. I'm just tagging along to stick it to them — and because I kind of like being alive, and maybe I'll get some materia out of it, too."
She hadn't expected the fiery wrath lurking just beneath the surface, jumping at the chance to reveal itself. All the same, she enjoys the ammunition against the perfidious part of her that wavers on what kind of person he truly is — even when she only ever saw the good in him.
"All right, I'm done answering your questions, detective. I gotta get my beauty sleep." On cue, Yuffie yawns and stretches her arms before drawing up her fur-lined hood over her head. "Hey, you better get some sleep too. I'll be real mad if you collapse on us like Chocobo Boy over there."
The prospect of sleep pleases her burning eyes — they won't have a minute of respite once they cross the threshold out of this house, after all. There's something comforting about the nine of them, serene, crammed into a warm room like this. She always imagined that this was what big families did after eating a large meal together.
She pulls her hood over her face and closes her eyes.
They depart from Holzoff's house at dawn the next morning. He descends his staircase in his leisurely gait, ready to see them off.
"Thanks for lodging us, Mr. Holzoff," Aerith says with an appreciative grin.
"No problem at all. I consider it my duty."
They work their way out of his home, one by one, and when they've all filed out into the snow once more, Holzoff calls after them.
"Be careful out there," he warns. "If you freeze to death, no one's going to bring your bodies home."
Gaia's Cliff lives up to its name. It dwarfs the last wall that they scaled before arriving at Holzoff's house and towers over them with remorseless austerity. She can hear the Planet's voice louder than ever before here, but there are no words — only droning moans.
Aerith pants heavily, sweating and crimson-cheeked, by the time they arrive at the rim of the crater. Cloud takes her hand and hoists her up over the edge. Her breath hitches — she squeezes his hand tightly, so tightly that the bones in her fingers could snap and splinter, at the sight that confronts her.
A geyser of Lifestream gushes from the gaping wound — the Planet's blood. A thousand voices accost her, ringing in her ears and ricocheting against the walls of her consciousness. She plants her hand on the side of her head — the once warm and welcome voices now torment her with their anguished cries for help. She can't help them. Even if she could, it's all for naught if she can't help herself.
Cloud keeps her hand in his as he leads her gently down the precipice. She moves one foot in front of the other, the movement automatic and stilted, before they stop to appraise what's before them.
"Something fell from the sky and crashed here." Cloud narrows his eyes, morose.
"And the Planet is trying to heal itself," she laments.
"Do you hear what it's saying?"
She shakes her head and kicks a pebble. "I hear it, but I don't understand it."
"Either way, Sephiroth's going to use this energy to summon Meteor, and that'll make this look like a scratch."
No matter how right he is, that's salt in the wound, a reminder of her potpourri of failures. She keeps silent and withdraws her hand, even as Tifa looks at her with a concerned frown. It resembles pity, but Tifa should know better than to pity her.
They continue down until they reach the foot of the slope. A slumped figure, cloaked in black, rasps out something unintelligible before collapsing into an indistinct heap.
"It's a clone," Cloud says solemnly, drawing his sword. "We're getting close."
They take a few steps forward until Cloud and Aerith realize that Tifa has stopped behind them. Aerith studies Cloud's alarmed countenance and wonders if she betrays her emotions as readily as he does.
"We're going after Sephiroth, right?" Tifa wrings her hands. "...I've lost a lot because of him."
She doesn't elaborate before she begins walking ahead of them, but then, she doesn't need to. A sick sense of guilt curdles in the pit of Aerith's stomach.
They hop across stone columns and charge through walls of wind as they close in on the throbbing heart of the Planet's injury. They look to the skies to see an airship approaching them — Shinra, no doubt on their way to exacerbate a situation that they created with their own bloodstained hands. Yuffie's words reverberate in her mind.
Another pair of stone columns. A cadre of clones, hunched over in their black hoods, hobble along in a single file line in the distance. Another wind passage. More clones. Every minute that passes without seeing him only serves feeds her anxiety.
"This is the end for all of you."
That familiar voice stops them midstep. Ahead of them, Sephiroth swings his sword against two unfortunate clones, causing them to curl up against the gravel. Indignation bubbles in her chest and crests in her throat.
"Think about what you're doing! You want to rule the Planet? There won't be one after you're through with it," she says balefully, strands of hair whipping about her face in the wind. "What good is a god of nothing?"
Cloud grits his teeth, and had any other person been watching him, they might have missed what that action meant. Aerith turns her head from him to Tifa and back to him. Are either of them aware of what's happening to him?
Sephiroth doesn't turn to face them. "You will understand when you return to the Lifestream and become one with me. For now, this body has outlived its usefulness."
His physical form vaporizes, but his aura still saturates the air.
"Be careful. He could still be here," Tifa cautions, clenching her fists.
Cloud mutters something that she can't make out and she's never granted the opportunity to ask. A force collides with her back, ejects the air from her lungs, and knocks her to her hands and knees. She coughs and checks either side of her— Tifa and Cloud are similarly keeled over. A shadow engulfs them, and when she looks up, Jenova's gruesome face stares right back at her.
After a brief struggle, the Jenova copy absconds, leaving two objects in its wake: the Black and White Materia. She heals the two of them to the best of her ability before tending to herself.
Cloud strides over and gathers the materia in either hand. "Jenova cells…I see. So that's what this is. The Jenova Reunion."
"That wasn't the real Sephiroth?" Tifa asks.
Cloud shakes his head. "No. But the real one is just beyond here. I'll explain later, but we've got the Black and White Materia back. I just want to defeat Sephiroth now. Once we do that, it'll be over."
"Wait," Aerith says quickly. "He wouldn't just drop those materia. He's probably tricking us."
He shrugs noncommittally. "That's a good point, but we can't just leave them there. Better that they're in our hands than his."
"We can't let the Black Materia go anywhere near him," Aerith says, knitting her eyebrows together decisively.
"You should take the White Materia. It's yours, after all," Cloud says, taking her hand and placing the materia in her palm. She should feel some degree of ecstasy coursing through her at the reclamation of something so precious, but as she stares into its green depths, all she feels is the steady thrum of resentment beating within her.
He supplies Barret with the Black Materia despite his initial objections, beseeching him to hold onto it at the cost of everything else if it comes to that.
"All right. This is it," Cloud declares. He grips the handle of his sword, channeling the spirit of someone who came long before him. He doesn't bother waiting for them and marches forward.
"Aerith," Tifa says, looking at her out of the corner of her eyes once Cloud is far enough ahead of them. "You're not on Sephiroth's side, right?"
The question affronts her more than it should. She rolls the White Materia around in her hand, relishing in the feeling of it sliding against the fabric of her mittens. It anchors her here to the present despite the nagging urge to drift towards the past.
"How could I be, after everything?" she responds mechanically.
Tifa sighs with relief and regards her with a tenderness that stings. "That's what I thought. I know you've lost a lot because of him, too. Let's go take care of this."
They advance, leaving the rest of their party behind. Just as they prepare to cross the threshold into the depths of the crater, a screeching sound pierces her eardrums like needles through skin. A white light floods her vision and throttles her senses; she brings her hands up to her face, but it persists undeterred.
"What? What's going on?" Tifa's voice, obfuscated by the wind, shouts out.
"Calm down. Sephiroth is close by. You need to be prepared for anything," Cloud assures. He's calm, disconcertingly so, which only further serves to tie Aerith's nerves into knots.
She brings her hands away from her face. When her eyes have refocused and the pain at the acute influx of light has subsided, she's no longer in the Northern Crater. They're standing in a village — a village that, until recently, was nothing more than an abstract concept to her, a scathing symbol of the men who left her behind.
Nibelheim.
