Chapter Forty-Seven: Secrets in the Lifestream

The basis of Sephiroth's theory had proved correct, he noted with some degree of satisfaction, even if everything else of his expectations had been defied. Firstly, here, his mind was clear. Jenova was a being foreign to this planet, and the Lifestream rejected her. It might have been how she had managed to stay in stasis for the past two millennia, not truly able to either live or die. Her absence caused a strange hollowness in what he might have called his soul; she had always been with him, if only recently discovered. To his surprise, the emptiness was liberating.

Secondly, tangled in the web of the Lifestream's waves was everything he wanted to know, if he could only find it.

This was, of course, the first time he had willingly exposed himself to the lifeblood of the planet. He was no stranger to mako and its effects, but it was a vastly different experience entering it in its raw, natural state. In the labs, a refining procedure acted more or less like a cosmic blender. The memories of countless lives were indistinguishable because they had been so finely hacked and mixed. Here, memories lived on more as waves than a liquid, coming and going, some as light as a fleeting thought, and others a deluge of senses and emotion.

He knew all too well that such exposure drove men mad, and so as he searched, he clung to two fundamental things: who he was, and why he was here. The rest had quickly been stripped away.

The burn of the mako had faded faster than he expected, and he wasn't sure why. For whatever reason, the battle was solely in his head now. He focused all his energy on passing through the waves without feeling them, prodding for what he was looking for, touching, but never grasping.

Materia, he sent out the thought. The waves around him rippled in response, and he thought he saw a spark run into the distance like a signal down a neuron. In response, he felt someone's disappointment in their inability to use materia, and another's fear at once having been burned by a botched cast. Some of the answers came in the form of images, others were in words, and still others as a wave of understanding too quick for either. It took everything in him to retain his own senses in the barrage of others'.

He frowned, watching his spark ripple even further into the distance to ignite a thousand others. There were too many signals, and too few of them relevant. He was overwhelmed. Healing, he modified, hoping it would filter out some irrelevant memories instead of inspire more. The memories shifted in response. Gratitude that a healer had been there for a broken leg, awe at seeing flesh knit together, but undeniable flickers of sadness from the dead.

It wasn't enough.

He pushed harder, unsatisfied and even angry at the response. Stronger, he forced. Something stronger. Where can I find it? Tendrils of the Lifestream, aglow with desire, were reaching out to caress him. He revolted at the touch.

The images he got clearly belonged to amateurs. Materia mastery was rare, after all. He saw the town healer and his level two restore, the girl down the street who picked up a newly minted orb at the corner store, and the boy who pick-pocketed a lower level SOLDIER but had never been able to heal as much as a scrape with it. His frustration began to mount. There was too much information, none of it was usable, and the Lifestream was eager to consume him. He'd be well and truly mad before he found anything of use unless he could find a better way to sift through it all.

He had hoped to avoid the tactic, but he knew now that the waves responded to his own thoughts, and it was all he had. He steeled himself, and felt the memories batter him as a he refocused his energy from keeping memories out to projecting one in the distance.

This time it was not a spark that he summoned, but a ghostly image of Hana, standing at the edge of the pool, the long wound stark against the canvas of her bare skin.

The flood of responses was staggering.

That looks bad, one said. Miracle enough she survived. I had a patient…

A wound like that killed my Pa. He was working the railroad one day…

Poor girl…

never got to walk again…

merchant brought a chair with wheels…

she'll never be the same…

can't fix something like that…

Sephiroth clamped down on his defenses and violently shut them out. With a swipe of his hand, the misty form of his wife dissolved and flew away like fireflies, their light sparking randomly at first then settling back into the steady ebb and flow of the Lifestream as the image dissipated.

Rattled, and feeling his memory starting to wear away already, he thought bitterly that he had failed. He could not stay. Resigned, if angrily, he began to funnel his energy back to his physical body so he could haul himself out of the pool.

Until a woman's voice, soft and sorrowful, made him pause.

My dearest Hana…

In a rush, he seized this wave of thought. The effect was strange – he felt it ripple through his physical and mental self. It was bigger than he had expected by far, almost like the entirety of another being was rushing in to share his body. For whatever reason, this spirit had remained undiffused for all this time, and now, he was acting as its host.

A light spread around him, and he was shielded from the waves. His mind was more or less his own again, though this woman was close, lingering much closer to his thoughts than he would have liked.

Who are you? Sephiroth asked the presence. How do you know Hana?

I am Aika Kazehawa.

The woman's thoughts were clear as a bell, if slightly discolored with time. He saw a handful of images from Hana's childhood – she was struggling to retain her grasp on a slippery river fish she had caught, then wandering down a street in Wutai with her head down and hair covering her face. He saw the first time she had been presented to Godo as an infant dressed in resplendent silks, and the moment when Aika had first been handed her crying, newborn daughter, tears streaming down the faces of both the mother and the child.

Sephiroth withdrew, shocked by the intimate entwining of their minds. He did not wish to share in this as deeply as Aika clearly wanted him to. Aika quietly respected the distance and withdrew a distance. As much as Sephiroth would have preferred for her to be entirely out, he appreciated the gesture.

And you are my son through marriage, she said, feeling the warmth of Aika's soft smile. It is a pleasure to meet you.

Sephiroth did not reply.

My daughter was very near to this place, close enough that I could read her memories, Aika said softly, sobering. I know what has happened.

Where is the materia to heal her? Sephiroth asked. He would discuss nothing else with this woman. He did not think he would be able to retain his sanity if he were to.

I'm not sure it can be done.

It can.

Aika paused. There may be a way. But not in the world below. Here, in the Lifestream, I might be able to do it.

What do you mean?

Aika did not answer his question. I will try. It is all I can promise.

And then he saw her. She was not the greenish hue of the Lifestream, but a brilliant white, a wreathed in an otherworldly glow. He saw what may very well have been an older version of Hana, nearly the same face, and the exactly same eyes. Just as Hana had from the very beginning, she looked at him without fear.

But humor me one last time. If I do this, I will never be able to ask you again.

What do you mean by that?

Again, Aika left his question unanswered. Son, why do you run from her? When our minds touched, I could feel your heart. I know how you feel for her.

Time, and Sephiroth's entire existence, stopped. He was so shocked that he did nothing as Aika breathed out slowly, closed her eyes, and reached a hand forward, pressing it into his chest. Slowly, gently, she eased her spirit past his flesh to touch his heart.

He stood, immobilized, at her ghostly touch, something like electricity shooting with amazing speed and power through his entire body. There was no pain, and it might have even been soothing, but that did not stop the fact that she had come uninvited. He stared at the spot where her wrist stopped, hand disappearing inside him. Despite her infuriating insistence on ignoring all his barriers – even the ones as strikingly obvious as his skin - he was powerless to do anything about it.

The action reminded him of someone else he knew who shared those same, dark eyes.

Aika's brows drew together in concern at whatever it was that she was sensing. She withdrew her hand. Despite seeing it all, I still do not understand it.

There is no need for you to, he said, not without irritation. I came here only for the healing materia.

And after I give it to you? She turned her eyes on him, unafraid of her own question, glimmers of a familiar fire sparking in her eyes. Will you heal her and then disappear out of her life? What a terrible cruelty to mend her body and leave her heart in pieces.

Sephiroth was tired of playing this game. Your time on the planet has passed. It is of no concern to you what I do next.

It is of infinite concern to my daughter. When she came here, a hair's breadth from death, she was not full of anger toward what you had done to her, only sorrow and confusion.

Why are you telling me this-?

She loves you.

Sephiroth pressed his lips into a fine line. As much as he desired to meet the intensity in Aika's eyes with a heat of his own, he could not. The words twisted something very deep and painful within him.

I know, he said at last. And it was all he could say. He was done talking about it.

Then go, she said with a sad smile. Return. Do what you will. Perhaps it is none of my business, as you have said. The dead have no place among the living. But take this last piece of knowledge with you: your mother, Lucrecia, is not here in the Lifestream.

Sephiroth considered the utterance carefully. Are you saying my mother is alive?

I do not know. I only know that she is not dead. You will have to find the truth yourself, as I cannot see into your world any more.

The way she worded that disturbed him.

And then, I have a favor to ask, before I give you what you seek.

What is it? Sephiroth asked. For some reason, her glow was strengthening, but somehow becoming greener, more like the color of raw mako that he was so familiar with.

Deliver my final words to my daughter…the secret I died to protect, and the reason I lingered undissolved in the Lifestream for so long after my death. Now the time is right, and she can know the truth.

Aika's form exploded into light and then collapsed inward. The burst was so bright that Sephiroth had to close his eyes and shield them with a hand, and he could feel the heat of her life wash outward in one final burst. When the light subsided, all that was left of Aika was a perfect sphere, milky white, smooth and pearlescent. Wisps danced around the materia, their gentle sparkle and flow reminiscent of the waves of the Lifestream around him.

The materia descended into Sephiroth's open palm, and he closed his fingers around it. It felt different, unlike any materia he had ever encountered before. Though he hoped that it would prove to have healing properties, it didn't feel like a healing materia. He could feel a great power within the shell of the sphere, lazily coiling and swirling around and into itself, but its identity was a mystery.

He opened his mouth to ask what this was, but Aika was gone, and the Lifestream was fading away around him. In the final moments before he awakened to the solid earth beneath him, in the first burst of sunlight that greeted his eyes, he heard Aika's voice finally betray her most dangerous secret.

Blackwell Reuben is not Hana's father.


A/N: O.O