Back In the Lifestream

I had watched him float along the waves of the Lifestream, aimless and like a lost child. Finally she wouldn't be taking him again. Jenova was no more and just in time as his psyche, battered and bruised though it was, was still intact. The blessing and curse of Cetra is to be in tuned to all that is part of the current of the Planet. I swear his internal emotions were as raw and painful as the wails of the Planet before the healing had begun again when the calamity had struck her beautiful face causing an open wound.

I watched him, wary and curious, from afar. I knew that his mother came and went often as this was her punishment for allowing Jenova to be used on her body to produce him. He was as beautiful as he was terrifying to me. I remembered how I had been ran through with his infamous nodachi Masamune. While it didn't hurt and I had been versed who was truly in control of his mind, it didn't make it any less frightening. I maintained my emotions and so it was hard I admit as the Planet told me to let it happen, to allow myself to be struck down by him. Once it was said and done I was here, in the beautiful life giving green.

And as I purely observed from the Lifestream, Zach and I became friends. While what we had initially was what I thought was love as I was young at the time and he was my first male suitor. We became so much more suited as great friends. I found I could confide in him my thoughts and he could in me things that had happened to him as well. We often watched and looked after Cloud together along with the rest of my friends to the extent of our ability. I also loved Cloud like a brother as well. I was aware he'd thought he loved me, but at the time it was the imprinting of Zach's then emotions that he carried, not really making them true as was apparent by his true love in Tifa, his now wife on the mortal plane. We talked often and he would share stories of the great General Sephiroth…before his obvious downfall. I also found myself wanting to get to know his mother even if she never seemed to stay long in the Lifestream.

He was so restless and I sense that he was well and truly tired. After I talked to his mother and became close to her, it truly started sway my thinking on him entirely. I realized that this overall issue started…from his conception. He truly was a victim of circumstance. While I had feared him this whole time because of our bloody history, I realized that the sin started with the father and mother as well. The mother was so piteous. She was so sorry. She told of her own secrets and ones that melded with Sephiroth's. Vincent became a very serious topic as well. As I listened to the story Vincent's father, Grimoire's death at her hands and her subsequent guilt, of Vincent's and her lost love and Hojo's eventual abuse and burden on both, I started to feel something for him I thought I would never would: sympathy.

The last time Sephiroth had been struck down after my Holy Gospel spell healed the people of Edge from the last fightback from Jenova, Geostigma, I knew it was time to act. He was a lost soldier. He had blood trickling from his head, mouth, and sides. He looked terrible but it was the only way to stop him. Now I had four lives to look after. Sephiroth, Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo, all of Jenova, all victims of circumstance, though technically the boys were of him. The remnants chose to dissolve back into the Lifestream with the hope of maybe living a better life again, to be born again to a family that would love them. Sephiroth though. His will was so strong and so adamant to live. He was also so lost now with no Jenova to lead him since she had been in the forefront since Nibelheim. The Planet spoke to me and told me so much about him. To my surprise I found out that he was Cetra…

My mind was reeling from the revelation. I didn't know what to say or how to feel. I now was resolved that I would, with the Planet's positive reinforcement and Lucrecia's love for him as well, I wanted to try to help mend him.

After a time, I observed him back healed and aware again, albeit confused. I watched him rebuild his relationship and life with his real mother. I saw how they grew close and how happy he was to be with her. Planet then whispered something to me that I believe that neither Lucrecia nor Sephiroth was aware of but would make him that much more happy. I heard his secret plea to make things right the best that he could.

I decided enough time had passed enough where I had saw enough to be sufficiently comfortable over my initial fears of him as time was assuaging them. I, with my brethren's strength, approached mother and son and began the process to heal them.

I could feel more than see that he was afraid of me. He had never been one for facial expressions, this being due to his upbringing but the sheer panic I could feel from him in his aura was overwhelming as he attempted to back away as I spoke to let him know that we felt he was ready to be judged on his own merits.

I swear the Sephiroth was about to run as far away from me as he could possibly get and just as fast seriously. I would have laughed but I could empathize with how awkward he felt since, well I had been the other party of a tragic play. Lucrecia could see that I needed to talk to him alone and that this was the first step and she bowed out gracefully. You have to love mother's instincts. There's nothing like it in the world.

If he wasn't panicking before, he was now. I heard him sigh and asked what I meant about being ready. Again I could have laughed at his boyish shyness and wariness. I went into detail about how we, the Cetra, had been watching him. I particularly had been watching him with Zach and observing him. I got to see him almost relive as much of his childhood as a 24 year old man could. I watched him perform his katas with Masamune, retelling stories from his youth with Genesis and Angeal for his mother, her in awe of his strength and how beautiful he moved. Though it wasn't drawings and hand paintings, I was truly touched. And whatever I was missing, Zach was more than happy to fill in his friend and redeemed hero's history.

As I watched Sephiroth's face register what I was saying, he started to relax further. I let him know that we'd observed him for some time, commended him for taking his existence as well as he had. I knew he was ready to proceed with learning more of his lineage and I let him know so. Though his face didn't show it, his emotions were held in his eyes and I saw what looked like determination, an oath given right then; to who the oath was based I wasn't sure. I suddenly felt a swarm feeling from Planet and placed my hand over my heart. It was a feeling of understanding, of peace radiating throughout my connection with the Planet. I knew that when Planet wanted to tell us, it would reveal its plan that went along with those feelings.

I visited often with Sephiroth after he'd found out about his Cetran background. Initially he was stoic, but I knew better. He was despondent due to more pain, the pain of being denied hearing the one voice and soothing love of the entity that he had sought to destroy. That one voice, any kindness, could have made the difference. It was all just so much guilt it was like a literal slaps to the face, each and every sin as they came and went. I had had time to heal a lot of my pain in my own way while Sephiroth's end after end, hadn't even been allow to rest in the Lifestream due to the calamities influence; he hadn't even really died properly. So much of him reminded me of Vincent's own history and the struggle with the misplaced sin he constantly seemed to atone for.

Due to Vincent's and I friendship, I was able to somehow see the man for just that, a man that had been a child that was abused turning into a teenager controlled, shaped, and owned to ultimately a young man used and finally realizing the truth of it all and the futility of it causing his mental break allowing Jenova to latch her claws into him and doing what one only could call a psyche imprisonment.

This did not mean that I came to him completely without my humanity. I had been fearful when Planet told me of what it meant to do for Lucrecia and Sephiroth based on Lucrecia's plea.

I feared he was too gone, that it had been always and completely him that had orchestrated everything. That was a very real possibility. Sephiroth was a genius in anything he did and a quick study so to underestimate him and not to be aware would be an error, fatal on that person's end. I…I feared him for myself. I knew my role but it was still very terrifying nonetheless. One doesn't just get over a borderline 6ft blade of steel piercing you. The same ethereal beauty that makes Sephiroth is absolutely hideous when manic with rage and insanity…or not him at all.

I had watched each and every time he was drug back from the Lifestream, each time he would almost just let go and almost find peace, he'd be taken again. His friends that were here and understood, mainly Zach and a sometimes reluctant Angeal, wanted their old comradery. I watched as he was treated like a marionette puppet each and every time and something about that just time started to take that fear out of me and a sadness I had never felt for anyone before took its place. I could see his aura, what was left. His was as tattered as the cape that Vincent wore around him in dark blues, greens, and blacks. He…his psyche was dying… for good this time, all that was left of his personality would be gone. I pushed my feelings aside for good after we'd talked and he'd taken his news better than well.

We seemed to talk about small things daily and I became like a second child to Lucrecia though she never sought to replace the love I had of course for my natural mother here in the Lifestream. We talked of many things. From her happiest achievements to shy love she still harbored for my dear friend Vincent, we talked and giggled, I all the while caught my gaze going back to Sephiroth with stolen glances from time to time. I even went and talked to him directly. While the need to run immediately had dissipated a lot from him, we were able to just talk for once. I could still see that he struggled to speak to me, that he still felt unworthy. He had told very bluntly it was his weakness that allowed the evil to overtake him and murder me and very matter-of-factly that if he had been a better man and not had delusions of grandeur, he wouldn't have been so desperate to seek normality after he had found he was an experiment, nothing more, causing his break in sanity (after his conversation with Genesis, on the heels of the death of his comrade Angeal whom also had affected Zach), he may have not incited to reach out to something he knew was unnatural but nonetheless took all the blame onto himself. I responded with a giggle. That broke his mask faster than I had ever seen. Pure unadulterated confusion reigned on his face. That made me laugh harder and his snowy brows pinch further downward.

I forgot that he was a General. I did. He was so heartbreakingly young to have been exposed to all that had been at such a young age. He was a General in Wutai at 14.

His no nonsense speech just made me laugh because I knew better than it being just that white and black but Sephiroth is quite literally white and black. Just looking at the silvery-white hair, menacing trench coat with pauldrons, complete with black buckle boots, topped off with beautiful slit-pupiled blue green eyes, that was what he was, black and white in sometimes logic and his features. I coughed a little into my balled fist to calm my chuckles and I know annoyance was on the heels of confusion with Sephiroth. I told him I knew things that he didn't even know just yet about himself but that it was not my place to share but that it had been brought to my attention. I also told to not to frown it marred his beauty.

We both froze at that one.

I had no idea where it had come from and I had gone and confused myself thoroughly and I just knew I was blushing. I immediately looked down. The funny thing is if I had been looking up, an almost imperceptible blush had taken hold of the crest of the cheeks of my beguiled victim.

It seemed as though from that one little statement things grew more comfortable from there on out. There was no more tension, just us talking getting to know more about each other. The time finally came for the judgement with the Cetra to begin. I for once was actually nervous-for Sephiroth. To us time had been but a month or two. To the outside world almost a full seven years had happened since his second fall at Meteor fall as the people of Gaia called it now. During that time I had found myself truly starting to be drawn to him. My mother noticed it, so did several other Cetra, some with hopeful looks, others still not able to move forward. I would not condemn them for the way they felt. They all had to heal in their own way just as I had even if my circumstances was a little more unorthodox since it was murderer/victim scenario in which the person that had did the murder was not truly himself. The oddest things I swear.

I'd known I'd started to like him way back when I stole glances at him. He was a truly amazing creature. He was all muscle, limbs, and sinew packed into this angel's guise, complete with a black wing. And all that hair just as long and flowy and I am sure as soft as my own if not softer…So similar he looked to Vincent. It was like he was a negative of a picture of him with his mother's eyes. They were only two or three inches off of each other in height. Sephiroth was a bit more bulker due to the experimentation but other than that…

I think, no I know I was understanding something my mother had said to me some time back when I began to observe him:

Given that you are to be around him and you know his true nature, you may start to have feelings for him

That will never happen mother. He was my murderer and though I have forgiven him that and acknowledged it was not him, I just do not see that happening

Dear child, you do not have control over who your heart yearns for. While I know your history and I know that sin was great and I am not forcing him upon you, you've done your share for the Planet many times over, I want you to be aware of the power that your Cetran blood can do and what the benefits of being with one of your own could be.

Mother…Sephiroth is not Cetra, is he?

Oh my dear daughter, yes he actually is. This is why the calamity sought to use him so. Did really think his strength was all because of experimentation? Yes he may have taken some features from the evil one but you know his true parentage and Lucrecia's line was the closest left this is why she sought to control the brilliant yet weak mind of Soji Hojo, Lucrecia's late husband. She knew of Lucrecia's lineage way before he did. She also knew that there was no way that Hojo…would be a good fathering candidate either…

Oh mother, I never knew… Was Jenova really so nefarious, so devious as to do such a thing based on her knowledge of things? No wonder Sephiroth is so very broken. I will take your counsel into heart. You have never told me nothing that is never been true and if the time comes and I find my heart swayed, I will need the resolve to continue on and you know I will stubbornly stick to my choice…and to him if that's what my heart yearns for.

Daughter, by your own wording you don't know it, but you are already ensnared by him. I will support you anyway that I can since I know we will try to find a way to completely make the Jenovian in Lucrecia and him inert so that they may finally have peace…and maybe the one that Lucrecia goes to all these years later will as well as all his sins…will have been absolved.

How had she have saw? Of course she had saw. Mother's intuition and Cetran powers combined. I chuckled again and suddenly was thrust back into the now where I sit in a field of flowers much like I had made at the beginning for my entrance. I was sitting by Sephiroth looking out at the expanse of flowers and blue sky. Our hands were so close to each other as we sat there. I was nervous but with him, I knew I would have to initiate any contact because he was still so scared that our tentative whatever this was would disappear. We both had acknowledge that there was mutual attraction and enjoyed each other's company. I gently laid my small hand on top of his larger one. He initially tensed then looked down then up at me searching my eyes. After finding what whatever he was looking for, he tentatively turned his uncovered hand and our hands intertwined and we sat and enjoyed our silence together. Every day he got more and more of his normality and life back. He'd he even gotten to reunite with Zach and that lighten his spirits even more. Angeal was a bit more reluctant due to his abandonment and also him feeling that Sephiroth left him as well. They finally also came to a peaceful understanding, true missed friendship winning out. As we continued on with our enjoyment of the moment, I briefly saw an excited Zach hoping from foot to foot and giving me a heart breaking smile and two thumbs up-then he was just gone!

I jumped up from where I had been sitting, Sephiroth right behind me with a slight perplexed look on his face as well but it was because of my actions. I was panicked for a second, hoping that Sephiroth didn't misunderstand as his peripheral didn't encompass Zach so he would have read it as a panic in general, worrying him in his own way. I was washed with an understanding from the Cetran feelings and emotions.

Suddenly we were joined by my mother Ifalna and she glanced down at our joined hands with a knowing look. She stated that it was time for the judgement to begin on Sephiroth that Lucrecia's be a joint judgement as she had a hand in a lot of what had transpired with the circumstances.

Sephiroth gently took his hand away and looked at me with that same determined, oath-bearing look in his eyes, and then I understood. He was silently stating he would come back, if he could to me. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than for to come back to me as well.

The trial was a whirlwind. Sephiroth being the man he was too proud to show his fear of the unknown. We knew he had to go through the trial and he was fully willing, that didn't mean he wasn't nervous of the outcome. When we both received the judgement it was to be, I hadn't known I was so vested. I am sure if I could have been faint for the relief, I would have.

Once the Jenovian cells in both Lucrecia and Sephiroth had been inert, Plant elaborated its plan.

To say I was flushed would be an understatement. I know knew what had happened fully to Zach and the others; they were alive and apparently had been living for some odd year on the surface. I had been so caught up entirely in Sephiroth I hadn't even looked at the mortal realm since Cloud and Tifa's marriage that both Sephiroth, Zach, and I had enjoyed from afar. Zach and I had even went down to grace Cloud temporarily to let him know we were just as happy for him as he was at the time.

I digress.

I knew that Sephiroth and I had become close, closer than an acquaintance and more now akin to a friend. Could he feel for me the small fledging feelings I had had over the span of time that had started to grow. Planet but this seemed wrong and yet so right at the same time! Here we were, both as different as one could be from humanity and yet still part of it. We were both forever on the edge of humanity due to our natures, Sephiroth's exceeding mine even more with the Jenovian traits in tow. His pale skin, soft silvery white hair that never tangled no matter how I mussed the ends of it intentionally, long hair…He looked like an honest to goodness angel. While I couldn't say outright I was in love with him, I could be honest and say that I was well on my way to it. He was always polite and even if we did hold hands, we'd not kissed or he made any admission that this was in anyway reciprocated feelings. He was still at times precarious as well, as if he were afraid he would frighten me away too. Always the gentleman, he always walked at my side as a second shadow, now hand in hand with me. He clearly wanted to be around me at this point, but marriage, children? Assumptions were getting us both nowhere and we would have to talk.

It was so much more than outside appearance with Sephiroth too. He had proven that he really did at some point before the madness and the high jacking of his extraordinary mind, he had had a hero's heart. He had intelligent conversation. We could talk anything from strategy to basic gardening, something I didn't even know he care anything about. It made since though in a way, the way he read and absorbed all knowledge immediately that he could and would have knowledge of just about a little of everything. He, went talking about his past life, his true real life, could recall finally the missing pieces that were healed and mended by Planet and had been able to talk about it. It was like once his memory was not severed, he could remember all people he'd ever known that had meant something or did something important for him. He even remembered finally meeting me and saving my mother and me from the labs…Though she passed afterwards I was able to be taken in by my adopted mother Elmyra Gainsborough and given as good of life as I could have ever asked for up until the end. He always apologized that he didn't know, that he couldn't somehow remember that we'd met as children, him being about 13, a year before he would be unceremoniously sent off to war and his innocence truly lost becoming the youngest General the world had seen, and me a precocious 5 year old that would be hunted down because of my true nature, also losing more of my own innocence for it after losing my natural mother to death due to the experiments done to her. Sephiroth had fought to get us out of Shinra, and she had fought to get us under the plate, where she would perish. It was all very sad but all had been said and done. Unfortunately, Sephiroth just didn't rationalize that way. Planet, Sephiroth and angst didn't mix. I giggled at this notion, being well versed of another that loved his tirades of sinsinsinangstangstguiltguilt…

I got to know more about Angeal and Genesis through him, what they meant him. I got to see through his eyes Zachary, as he called him, and all his stubborn fun loving energy we both knew. I even got to know Cloud, though Cloud was completely unaware that Sephiroth had been aware of his presence since he was just a grunt at the time as Cloud would say. He would say that he always knew that even though Cloud hadn't passed SOLIDER testing didn't mean he wasn't capable else with a little mako and focus he wouldn't have been able to best him. It was his heart that made him strong and give notice to Cloud, even if Cloud didn't know it at the time. He had said while looking actually wistful that he'd planned on offering to train him some along with Zach so that he could try again.

To say I was floored with this revelation was an understatement. I had just assumed that they never knew each other or worse, they've never liked each other from the beginning but that would have be contradictory to what Cloud had said; Sephiroth had been Cloud's hero and it had killed him, if a little each time he had to kill him he came back more manic than the next.

Sephiroth told me about each and every solider he'd ever talked to, including the TURKS that he had befriended. I couldn't have guessed that he had been friends with Tseng and I could see why he was adamant to fix so many shortcomings. He had been definitely worth it to hang in there to see through to help resolve his broken mind and heart.

Now if we were to talk about his natural beauty, well that was a whole other topic in itself. That could take up pages. Make a novel actually. I willed myself to stop. I would certainly be the envy of all women that weren't adverse to him that is for sure. We both knew that if he was to be forgiven, which after Rufus's testimony and also hopefully after my friends had come to see he was better, that the masses would and could come to understand that it wasn't him, that he was as much as a victim of the old Shinra and its machinations as anyone. I had visited with Rufus from the Lifestream letting him know of what possibly was to come, and what his role was for me sparing his life as I did. This of course initially unnerved him to have a seemingly deceased woman before him, he calmed after I awhile. While I am a peace loving woman I am by no means blind to what Rufus had done behind the scenes. He for a time fancied taking up the mantle of his father and continuing on the madness that was raping the Planet of its and our source of life. It wasn't until I told him that under no uncertain terms that he too were being watched by the Cetra and if he continued his path, well, I couldn't say what safety would be for him and I was certain it would be much more worse and more permanent that the Geostigma. Well now that got him to thinking seriously about things and his welfare that he knew that even his TURKS couldn't save him from. So he conceded and stated that if Sephiroth should be brought back, he would have Shinra, albeit during his late father's control, they were the guilty party behind the subsequent mental break of the famous General and the fallout afterwards that cost almost everyone their lives on Gaia.

It was true that it wasn't Rufus's fault that things had turned out the way they did, he being a child at the time that Sephiroth was suffering at the hands of Hojo and actually none the wiser of what his father was allowing to happen to Nanaki or her at the time also under Hojo when he had come into Presidency at the hands of losing his father, which there was no love lost, by Jenova's hands. He only knew that she was a Cetra or Ancient and that his TURKS were to follow her. He had no idea really what Sephiroth and she had been through UNTIL she had in great detail told him. That settled it. He would help her and Sephiroth should he return and would provide them somewhere to live as well until they could work to come to a general consensus of what to do to introduce Sephiroth back to the world. He had confided in her that was the silent benefactor for the WRO because somewhere he knew that there was more to the story and now he had it.

We had found out that much like Zach, Lazard and Tseng had been sent back to Rufus. I was more than certain that this was helping him immensely in life. He'd get to know his lost blood relative and also Tseng, his most trusted protector.

Back this 'we' business of Sephiroth and me. I had been all over the subject and my mind had of course now fleeted back to the original subject of being sent back…as a couple. Was I strong enough? Was I able to truly transcend the false history and make new history with this man, my would be murderer?

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