Penance
©®™ Lt. Commander Richie
((Disclaimer:Do I REALLY need to make one of these every time? I don't own it. I'm Catwoman. I stole it for my own nefarious purposes. It'll be returned once everyone come home from Iraq and Bush is impeached and Chaney is assassinated. KIRK/SPOCK '08!))
Chapter 8
"Did you forget anything?" Yuffie asked Mira, and the six-year-old shook her head.
"I have everything Ms. Tifa told me to pack!" She chirped, holding up a bulging duffel bag. Yuffie nodded in consent, grinning. She turned to the rest of the group; it was comprised of Cloud, Vincent and Nanaki, and yelled to them.
"C'mon, guys! Reeve's already up there! Tifa and Cid have been ready since practically yesterday!" Yuffie yelled waving to them. Cloud sighed and turned to Vincent, but paused. A girl in a pink dress with brown hair was standing stock-still in the open door of Aerith's ruined church. He slowly turned, and Vincent spared a glance in the direction of Cloud's attention.
"That's Aerith." He said quietly, nodding in the girl's direction. At the simple motion the eight-year-old ducked her head to hide a quickly-creeping blush.
"What?" Cloud turned to him, and then looked down to Nanaki. "Is she? Is that Aerith?"
"Her name is Aerith Zeit, Cloud. She's a friend of Mira's. Her name and choice of clothing color are mere coincidence." Nanaki said, shifting his gaze in the direction of the girl. Mira noticed her and began waving, but Aerith ignored her. Finally, Vincent waved the little girl over with his clawed golden hand. She traversed the short distance in a small amount of time, jumping over twisted scraps of metal to reach the group of three. Up close, Cloud noted, she looked nothing like the Aerith he had known. She bowed to the three, and then placed one hand in the front pocket of her yellow apron. From it she drew a long piece of chain, and on the end was a flower-shaped piece of twisted wire. On the inside of the twisted-wire cage there was a single gold bell with a rune on it.
"I heard you were leaving." She mumbled, holding the charm out to Vincent. "I want you to have this. It's a lucky charm." Aerith was just short enough that Vincent had to bend down to gently take the trinket from her, and it was then that she did the unexpected. Everyone went quiet, even Yuffie stopped yelling for the trio to get their butts on the lift into the Shera. In a sudden movement, the eight-year-old had darted forward and kissed Vincent on the cheek. She dropped the charm and bowed again, deeper than her usual ones so as to hide the blush that was taking over the tips of her ears, her neck and most of her cheeks. Vincent was silent, rising to his normal height slowly.
"I'm so sorry..." The eight-year-old said, her voice quavering like she was crying. With fumbling fingers, she bent down and picked up the charm she had dropped. With a sudden motion, she pushed it into Vincent's human hand and turned tail. Aerith disappeared inside the church of her namesake, crying. The somewhat quiet Cloud who had, up until that point, held in his comments, chose that moment to remark.
"It's a wonder that you aren't married yet, you know. You've got preteen girls crushing on you." He said, a slightly jibing smile tugging at the edges of his lips.
"Can we just get on the Shera? Vincent. We're going to Nibelheim. You don't have to worry about eight-year-old admirers there." Nanaki said, attempting to nudge the two humans he was in the midst of in the direction of the Shera.
"C'mon, Mr. Vins'nt!" Mira yelled, waving one arm in the air and holding the straps of her duffel bag with the other. Yuffie waved too, but was silent. As the trio boarded the lift and headed up into the airship, she was still as quiet as the grave.
"While I am almost tempted to say that I am enjoying this newfound silence, I am worried. Yuffie, what's the matter?" Nanaki had made his way across the bridge of the airship, sitting down in front of the Kunoichi that had, up until then, been silent.
"I'm just not feeling good." She muttered into her knees. She had been in a corner with her knees up to her face for the entirety of the first half-hour of the trip. It was becoming a bit disconcerting to the rest of the group.
"Usually if you're not feeling good, you're in the nearest bathroom throwing up what you ate last." Nanaki rumbled, flicking his tail side to side as he sunk down to the deck on all four paws. Yuffie nodded glumly, not bothering to say anything. "This isn't normal for you."
"I know it isn't, alright!" Yuffie finally yelled, bringing her face up from her knees. Her eyes were red and puffy, like she had been crying. She put her head back down. "I'm jealous of an eight-year-old, okay?" She muttered, barely audible. No one on the bridge heard it, but the hulking red lion in front of the Kunoichi did.
"Jealous of... Oh." Realization dawned across the lion's face. He smiled warmly, but Yuffie interpreted it differently.
"Yeah, go on, laugh. So I'm jealous of Aerith Zeit, an eight-year-old, for giving Vincent probably his first contact with women besides handshakes for thirty-two freakin' years. So what? It's not like I like him or anything..." Yuffie trailed off, watching silently as Reeve walked onto the bridge with an inanimate Cait Sith in one hand and his toolbox in the other. Mira, once again in Vincent's cloak, stopped her make-believe of flying around on the glass floor above the clouds to run over to him and watch the tune-up of the robotic cat.
"Yeh ain't makin' that thing more annoyin', are yeh Tuesti?" Cid asked around the cigarette clenched in his teeth. Reeve shook his head, amused.
"No, no. Not at all." He said, in an almost mocking tone of voice. Yuffie sighed forlornly at the sight, wanting to be happy. She could always manage that before, but now something was just keeping her from being upbeat. Mira slowly made her way across the bridge of the Shera, stopping behind Nanaki. She whispered in the large cat's ear, and he nodded.
"Yuffie?" The six-year-old asked, curious. Yuffie lifted her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her glove. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I- hey! What?" Yuffie called out in shock as the six-year-old pulled off Vincent's cloak, her apparently favorite thing in the whole world, and placed it on Yuffie's knees. She picked up the end of the cloak and bunched it up on top of the cloak as well, and then stepped back.
"There. Now you can stop being sad, right?" Mira asked. Yuffie paused, folding her arms about the red cloak, and then nodded.
"Thanks, kiddo." The Kunoichi sighed, burying her face in the musty piece of old cloth. Mira nodded and sat down next to her, leaning against Yuffie's side.
"I share with my friends. I'm not mean to them." The simple, child-like logic prompted Yuffie to wrap one arm around the six-year-old in a one-armed hug. The two sat for a while, the thrumming of the engines eventually lulling them into a light slumber.
A field of flowers stood on a plane of nothingness, of complete light with no end, waving gently in the occasional breeze that did nothing to the people standing. Mira gently stood so as to avoid breaking the stems of the lilies of all different colors around her, looking down to where she expected to see Yuffie and Vincent's cloak. But all she was met with was a single God of Death Day Lily, its bright red and black coloring and jagged petals setting it apart from the field of white, pink and yellow.
"It's very pretty, isn't it?" A woman's voice said, and Mira spun around. She was met with a field of pink, interspersed with buttons of the same color. She looked up into the face of the woman she had spun to see, meeting a crystal-clear gaze of green.
"Yeah!" The six-year-old nodded, grinning. "Reminds me of people I know!"
The woman sank down to Mira's height, placing a dainty and pink-nailed hand on the girl's head. "It may be pretty," she began, "but colors like these in nature are warnings, sometimes. It could mean that it's poisonous, or that it has sharp thorns."
Mira stepped back from the flower nervously, a wide-eyed look on her face. The woman in pink laughed, a sound like the tinkling of a bell ringing through the air.
"Don't worry!" The woman chided, ruffling the girl's hair. "This one is harmless unless you try to pick it. It smells very nice, too."
"What happens if you try to pick it?" Mira asked, curious. She reached for the flower, tilting it ever-so-slightly so as to smell it. It smelled delicious, reminding the six-year-old of all her favorite things and places.
"It turns completely black, and the fluid inside the stem can burn your hands." The woman said very seriously, and Mira sharply let go of the flower.
"It reminds me of Mr. Vins'nt. Ms. Tifa said that his really big attack is really scary, an' he only uses it when he really has to!" Mira said, grinning widely because she had remembered so much. The woman next to her smiled a bit of a sad smile, looking down at the girl next to her.
"They all really like you, you know." The woman said, getting to her feet. Mira rose to her feet as well, nodding.
"I know. They don't care if I can throw a ball and put a big hole in a building!" The six-year-old threw her arms wide, and the woman laughed again.
"My name is Aerith. Aerith Gainsborough." The woman said, and Mira stopped her laughing and pantomiming.
"For reals?" She asked, and Aerith nodded. "I have a friend like you! Her name is Aerith too, she knows a lot of stuff. Just like you!" Mira turned to Aerith; she had been spinning as she talked with her arms out to her sides. "I'm not really dreaming, am I." The question, more like a statement, took the Cetra by surprise.
"You're very smart. No, you're not dreaming. You're in a place called the Promised Land." Aerith smiled down at Mira, and the six-year-old nodded, completely serious.
"I thought so." She said, falling down on her back into the field of flowers the two stood in. Slowly, she closed her eyes so as to block out the field of white above her. "My Mumma used to tell me stories about the Promised Land. She said it was where there was no pain or suff'rin'."
"You know, there's a reason why you're here." Aerith began, and Mira felt a soothing hand touch her forehead, gold bangles clicking together somewhere above her. "I know where your father is."
With a gasp, Mira opened her eyes. But instead of the white of the Promised land, her vision was obscured by a tattered red cloak. Silently, she began to cry.
Night had fallen quickly on the Shera, enveloping it in utter darkness that was only broken by the occasional flash of the airship's outer lights. It was only a little while after the all-encompassing darkness fell that a row of lights appeared on the horizon, twinkling merrily in the darkness. It was the beacon in the night that was Rocket Town. Tifa stood beside the two slumbering pseudo-sisters, a small smile gracing her features as she watched them sleep on. At some point in time, someone had gently wrapped the twice-borrowed cloak around the Kunoichi's shoulders, the long, torn and trailing cape held tightly to the chest of the six-year-old next to her.
"I just don't want to wake them up." The martial artist sighed, crossing her arms and tapping one foot to attempt to make up her mind.
"Then let them sleep."
"I can't, Cloud. We're almost there, and Yuffie hasn't even moved from that corner since we boarded." Tifa sighed, moving forward to rouse the two. The sounds of muffled sobbing reached her ears, and the martial artist gently drew back the end of Vincent's cloak to expose Mira's face. Shining tear tracks traced their ways down the petite girl's face, and only worsened as Tifa pulled her into a hug.
"I was close..." Mira mumbled through her sobs, burying her face in Tifa's shoulder.
"I'll take her, you wake up Yuffie." Cloud offered, gently separating the two and pulling Mira up into his arms. "Did you have a nightmare?" He asked, and Mira shook her head.
"No." Tifa shook Yuffie, the Kunoichi finally waking into bleary arousal.
"What day is it?" She mumbled, taking Tifa's proffered hand and rising to her feet. "And why does my neck hurt?"
"Same as when you went to sleep. We're almost to Rocket Town, Yuffie. I think Vincent wants his cloak back." Tifa said, pulling the smaller woman to her, twisting her neck both ways before releasing her. "That should do something about your neck, too."
"Thanks! Hey, what's wrong with Mira?" Yuffie asked, quickly traversing the space between her and Cloud.
"She woke up crying, she won't give me a straight answer." He said, and Mira gave a hiccup.
"What did you dream about?" Yuffie asked, putting a hand on the tiny girl's shoulder. "Space Pirates doing battle with evil aliens over a giant planet made of treasure?"
Mira shook her head, and hiccuped again. "No. I's in the Promised Land." Everyone around her stiffened in shock, Cloud whipping his head down to look at the girl curled against his chest. Once again, the red ribbon had fallen onto her forehead; short locks of hair fell in her vision and obscured her blue Mako eyes.
"Did you... Did you talk to anyone?" Cloud asked, and Mira nodded.
"Aerith. Aerith Gainsb'rough. She was really smart." She said, hiccuping once more and looking up at Cloud. He gave her a slight smile.
"Did she tell you anything important?" He asked, and Mira nodded. Yuffie and Tifa both smiled at her.
"She said you guys all like me lots." She said, smiling widely. "An' that she knows where my Daddy is." The frankness of the six-year-old's final statement nearly made Cloud drop the girl in shock, but he recovered her and set her gently on the floor.
"Maybe... Maybe you should get your things ready. We have to hike across the Nibel mountains tomorrow to get to the mansion, there isn't an airstrip big enough for the Shera in Nibelheim." He said, and Mira sighed resignedly.
"Fine..." She mumbled, and took Yuffie's hand. "Let's go find Mr. Vins'nt, he wants his cloak back probably."
Yuffie shook her head, using her free hand to pull the cape up off the floor and swish it around like a large red wing. "You kidding? Nyuk, nyuk, I can see why he likes his thing so much! It's so... Swishy!" She finished, pulling the cape of the cloak around her face like a movie vampire; not that her face needed any more hiding, even with the first buckle of the cloak undone most of the ninja's mouth was still covered.
"Yeah, isn't it?" Mira asked, smiling up at Yuffie. The two laughed as they walked down a hall in the Shera, heading for the room they were supposed to have shared.
Still just minor changes.