Aeris's first planned adventure was an easy choice. Retrace the path Avalanche took around the world – up to the same point their steps diverged from hers. Once there she could take the step beyond and complete the journey she missed out on. Cid muttered something about not getting stranded and a few days later handed her a satellite phone. He extracted a promise from her to always keep the device charged and call her when she reached the North Crater. Her companions had almost all flown away from the north, so why not her too?
Yuffie loudly wondered if Aeris wanted to meander as much as they did. Or if she would look in on familiar faces along the way. Aeris merely smiled.
Trekking from the edge of Midgar to Kalm took less than a day. The Planet's voice rumbled somewhere far below, the air cleaner now former traces of Mako in the air were long gone. Gentle wind washed over the grasslands. Grass beneath her feet and blue sky above; Aeris took her boots off part-way and walked barefoot to Mom's house. Shame Aeris could not stay for a longer visit, but there would be more opportunities in the future. Mom was so much brighter here in Kalm. Less tired.
After Mom's house came a long stretch of wilderness. Aeris procured enough supplies in Kalm to camp out safely. Her staff and materia would deal with the monsters; some remembered tricks of her first trip around the world kept her safe at night. She kept a journal, scribbling sightings, thoughts and distances.
Chocobo Billy did not recognise her when she made it to the farm. She never expected him to and paid the requisite gil to hire both a room and a chocobo. The Midgar Zolom might be dead (the impaled corpse thankfully no longer looming over the entrance to the Mythril Mines), but trudging through a swamp held little appeal; Aeris rushed over the distance on Chocobo-back.
The Mythril Mine was colder than memory; a well-worn route out to the grasslands and Fort Condor. The new Phoenix sat contentedly on the inert reactor, slumbering undisturbed by Shinra forces.
Aeris first ran into Cloud at Junon. Out on deliveries and by chance arrived in the port town at the same time as her. Together they visited Priscilla and Mr. Dolphin, the bay water now clearer and less polluted. Airship traffic criss-crossed the skies above; and no matter how much time passed, the city still did not look right in the absence of the Sister Ray. Spending time with Cloud lead to dinner together. Dinner became some drinks at the bar. Cloud contemplated pulling an all-nighter to get back on the road; Aeris invited him to her hotel room for coffee.
Their first time together. For all the flirting and missed opportunities years before and now in the present, a chance like this had never presented itself. Cloud was shyer than she imagined, much less confident, hesitant to kiss, to embrace, to please. Aeris took the lead and made clear what she wanted from their coupling; Cloud was a quick learner. He made some fumbling, awkward attempt to find out if she expected more of him now, but she disabused him of the notion. They had spent the night together – absolutely fulfilling after the clumsy beginning – but who knew when another opportunity arose? Cloud had his life, and she had hers.
He waved her off when the ship set sail for Costa del Sol; Aeris waved back and smiled at the memory of last night. Two days later she accepted a girl's – Undyne – offer of coffee close to midnight; the decision resulted in a split of her time with her new friend, the beach and the bar. This too resulted in a parting; Undyne had a life here and little desire for travel. Aeris shared a bed with her during her stay, bid her goodbye and set out once more.
Barret met her in the New North Corel, the make-shift second incarnation transformed utterly by its residents, new buildings shooting up almost by the day. Marlene asked Aeris a torrent of questions about the rest of Avalanche and she answered them all. At Barret's insistence Aeris spent the night on his sofa before setting out for the Gold Saucer the next morning. Here too would be a divergence; no desire to wind up down in the prison again.
Aeris toured the theme park, spent some pleasurable moments in secluded areas with a guy she met in the queue for the Shooting Coaster, but in the end left both him and the park behind.
Gongaga confounded her; what could she say now? Her second time here, and a certain elderly couple recognised her all too readily. How to explain the how and why of her previous lie, when she hadn't wanted to accept the implied truth? This time she provided them the closure they needed, apologising for before. They accepted her words; a chapter now closed off at long last.
The town showed signs of recovery, but time here was uncomfortable with the past looming so large. Cosmo Canyon was better; Nanaki pleased to see her, the elders crowding her to learn what she could now tell them having ventured into and back out of the Lifestream itself.
So busy here, her time split between reciting what she knew to the Elders and spending time with Nanaki. Too easy to lose all her time here. Unlike Nibelheim. Before reaching the town, Aeris considered getting a room in the hotel. The town was odd and fake, but functioned as a town. A revisit dismissed any notion of dawdling. The residents had dwindled over the years and left the town more oppressive. A feeling of too many eyes watching left her shivering. Stupid plan, but Mount Nibel must surely be better than this.
A mistake. The former resting place of Jenova plagued her. The Planet's voice was dim and Jenova was assuredly gone, but her voice somehow lingered here, singing her impossible, seductive song. No rest to be had – and more critically little idea of how to find her way down to Rocket Town. Possibly should have taken Tifa up on her offer of company. Or at least asked for a map.
Bad to ask so soon, but completing the journey was the important part. She used the still charged satellite phone to contact Cid and holed up at the Mako reactor for a few hours. Cid expected the call, but not so soon and fortunately close at hand. A relief to hear the whine of the airship's engines hours later. Another brief trip aboard the Highwind. Some minor grumbling aside, Cid was content to drop her off at the base of Mount Nibel. The mountain dropped below the airship and soon rushed up beside the craft as they descended. Cid promised to update the others on her progress and left her to her travels.
Rocket Town much changed; no Shinra-26 looming, no Cid and no Shera. The pair all too busy running their airship business, sending people and goods all over the world. The town still thrived in contrast to Nibelheim, the distant outpost used to construct and test the new generations of airship, the daytime air filled with the cacophony of construction. Aeris marvelled at the new craft, each presenting a new opportunity to sail through the sky.
She pushed onto Wutai, the sea crossing now via a regular ferry. Something of a shame Yuffie was not there to meet her. But Cloud was, having picked up from Cid where she was and calculated accordingly. Aeris enveloped him in a long hug and had trouble letting go.
Three days in Wutai, much of it in bed. She checked each morning if Cloud needed to go, and when he insisted he did not, she indulged. Almost tempting to ask him to stay with her and relive Enchantment Night with her. Unfair; Cloud had delayed more than he should and after a few more days in Wutai she also needed to move on once again. Regardless, her timing was off on the return to the Gold Saucer, but unsurprising; she never planned to replicate anything so closely. Her second visit to the theme park was much like the first; a night like any other. Crowds of people, lost bets on the Chocobos and couples on dates; but Aeris spent her time here alone.
Another night in the Ghost Hotel. In the theatre another couple struggled with badly thought out prompts to the audience's amusement. She rode the gondola, staring out at the other branches of the Gold Saucer arrayed below her, no fireworks exploding in the air around her this time. People crowded the steps up to Chocobo Square; Aeris fought for a space to turn and look back out away from the amusement park. The arc of a remembered helicopter ascending away.
Barret helped charter a boat the next morning; her path took her out to a rarely visited island chain. No reason to spend long at the Temple ruins now the Black Materia was gone. Little to see beyond the plunging pit nowhere close to deep or vast enough to hold the gigantic structure of the Temple of the Ancients. Uncomfortable memories of the pit, of Sephiroth at the edge- Cold. She shivered during her return trip to Gongaga, wondering if perhaps the recreation was not a good idea.
Travelling North lightened her mood, a sense of anticipation and excitement like her previous solitary journey. The archaeologists at Bone Village still dug into the earth, a few conspiratorially telling her of the unexpected visitors years before who entered the Sleeping Forest – and made it out the other side as far as they could tell. Aeris let them talk her out of attempting to enter the woods today and rented a room. But hard to relax or sleep; no matter what she tried, her thoughts focused on what lay so close at hand. She slipped from her room in the midnight hours and followed the remains of the path North.
Stepping inside the forest sparked a worry; whatever guided her through the trail previously might be gone and the Sleeping Forest now true to its name. But neither exhaustion nor tiredness marred her as she hurried through the oppressive quiet of the woods. She arrived at the City with the dawn. And now, another deviation. Before she could not bear a delay and followed the path into the centre; into the hidden forest and the lake within the city, down into the cavern below. She had never seen the remainder of the city, the fallen houses, the still usable structure Avalanche camped in during their pursuit. Less urgency now.
So much of the city damaged and destroyed by the ravages of time. Acres of rubble, and little indication of what might have once been here. The air was warmer than it should be, some quirk of the landscape or some ancient Cetra device still operating was unclear. Paths snaked around the city and lead further North. Down into a canyon and a shell-like spiralling stair up into the mountains beyond. New ground upon which she had never trodden. The next link in her route. But there remained one place within the city still to revisit.
The fish vanished at her touch as it had before. The long descent down the crystalline stair as dizzying. But no pressing need to move fast, to commence the ceremonies, a rush capable of sending her tumbling down the stairs. Aeris descended and made her way to the central platform. The place where she once died. Nothing here to indicate what had happened. Vague in memory; nothing but a shadow of pain, confusion and darkness. The altar did not invoke the discomfort of the Temple. Her ending once, but this place held little fear for her.
A glimpse of something in the deep water. A flicker of white or perhaps green. Safe enough until needed again. Aeris surveyed the cavern once more and leapt off the central platform. The first truly new step of her journey.
Better prepared than Avalanche for this next stage; Aeris changed into her cold weather gear at the Northern limit of the city and scrambled up the shell stairs. The snowfields beyond the mountains had shocked her friends. Aeris still shivered despite her preparations. The winds howled around her, snow swirling. How horrible would it be to try this unknowingly, to struggle through the snows in her old dress and a too thin jacket?
Of all the places she had never seen, Icicle Inn and the cluster of houses nearby remained one of the more fascinating, intriguing and sorely tempting. Despite her shivers and imaginings of Avalanche's previous journey, snow was curious. Better when she reached the inn, a series of hills rising beyond the settlement blocking the winds. In the shelter, snow was beautiful and curious. Now, if only the others were here to engage in snowball fights. A pang; unlikely any of them had the desire to try last time either.
Ever since leaving the city, the Planet quietened beneath her. Tifa had echoed her mother's words in previous conversations – and it made sense. The Planet's focus was ahead on the deep scar Jenova caused. Something for later. Here, not far past her ending, was her beginning. Aeris took her time getting to the damaged house; she dropped off her bags in the inn, got warm again, and enjoyed dinner. As with reaching the City, hard to focus on little else but the anticipation of her next destination.
The broad strokes of what awaited her was well-known to her; the state of the house – the power still functional – the shadows and echoes left by her parents and Hojo. The bullet holes still invoked a shiver, but she would not let it deter her. Creaking floorboards echoed in the stillness; she fumbled with the out-dated monitor and VHS. In grainy images, Aeris saw her mother again; and for the first time, her father.
She watched each tape three times, scarcely listening to their voices, focusing more on her parent's faces, their movements, the slow progression of their relationship. How stilted they were in the first tape, relaxed by the second – and somewhere in between the second and third, everything advanced and now Mom cradled her. The last tape was hardest to watch; Hojo's intrusion ended the family's peaceful life and with it came another fatal gunshot. She heard both the bullets responsible for ending her parent's lives.
The rest of the house failed to turn up any additional artefacts. Shinra and Hojo were sloppy in some ways, less so in others. Nothing but old, out of fashion clothes, decomposing toiletries and decayed food. The sense of family in the building was long gone. Any other research or notes her mother or father might have made were gone. No overlooked secrets of the Cetra. No rites, no rituals, no further knowledge. No coldly scientific texts a scientist might make. If such artefacts existed, Hojo had taken them. Aeris took the tapes and retreated to the hotel, holing up in her room alone.
Of course the contents of the tapes affected her; how could they fail to? She hugged them to her chest. Little appetite but she forced a meal down the next morning. She would need her strength for the next part. In a surreal bid to catch up with Sephiroth, Avalanche had used the nearby ski-slope to speed up their descent. A potentially fun route, but Aeris had a lot to carry. She took a longer, winding parallel route down to the hot-springs.
Ahead, Gaea's Cliffs rose high. Mr Hozelhoff remembered Avalanche well-enough; who could fail to remember such a mismatched group, so woefully unprepared for climbing the mountain? She smiled at his amazement they had successfully scaled the cliffs but taken a different route away again. Aeris passed on their apologies and ignored his critical look when she confessed to a desire to also climb the cliffs. He stopped short of advising against it, but warned of far different the conditions at the peak; old advice and routes may no longer hold true.
The most physically intensive part of her trip; Aeris long prepared for the climb, practising, researching and learning all she could about mountain and ice-climbing. Amazing Avalanche had survived this at all, the icy-covered rocks, the cave systems threading in and out of the towering cliff. She carried on; her route and Avalanche's scarcely reconcilable. But the important part here was her destination and she inched ever further up.
When Avalanche made this same trip, they found a maze of twisted rock and high winds in the bowl of an impact crater, a plume of Lifstream flaring up at the centre. All gone now; demolished by Sephiroth and the WEAPONS. A conical abyss lay before her instead, irregular rock outcrops providing a tiring, but usable route down deep below ground. Not her route. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Still undecided if what remained of those deep trails was worth striving for; if her journey would halt in this same spot via the Highwind.
On the edge of the crater she called Cid. Her timing was off and it would take him three days to reach her. That was fine; there was a safe-spot below the ridge, a small cave she could set up a camp in, sheltered from the cold and wind and monsters as much as possible. The next day she skirted around the rim of the crater, peering down into the depths and outwards to the unfamiliar land beyond and to the South. Avalanche had never set foot there. And for now, neither would she.
The day after, she tensed as the sounds of something scrabbling up the cliffs became too loud to ignore. Tension. Another climber? Some more monstrous threat to deal with? She clutched her staff tight, ready to swing- Cloud clambered over the edge and Aeris could do nothing but hug him. Cid had called to tell him to warn of his delay – and find out if Cloud was in a convenient spot. Fortunately he was.
An unrealised tension slid from Aeris's shoulders. They curled together in comfort when night fell, shared warmth so much better than burrowing into her sleeping bag alone. Bliss. The next morning, Aeris asked Cloud how long he was going to hang around for; to her delight he intended to stay to the end now. Of course; he too had missed out on a number of her next steps – not least the Highwind's flight from the North Crater to Junon – and he too liked the idea of revisiting this missing portion of Avalanche's journey. Smiling, Aeris took his hand and they found ways to pass the time until Cid's arrival.