(( A/N: sorry about the slowness. I've been very sick. I fainted on saturday -after a recurring run of fainting fits- and was taken into hospital - but thanks for being patient! B xxxx))

Heart Less Love

Part Six: Guidance

"What if all the memories were just a lie?"

One Week Later

The words still rang in her ears. The veiled admonishments and the soft tone used to deliver the ultimatum but however well concealed it was thought to be, it was an ultimatum none the less. She'd smiled at the time, and nodded her head, gripping the hands chilled by fear and stressing with rounded syllables filled with love and faith that everything would be alright.

Then, as she stood at the foot of the Shera, she was forced to reconsider this standpoint.

By her side, steadfast in absence of the one who would take care of her and her distracted ways, were Vincent, Cloud and Cid. Each of them faced to the distant horizon where she was unwilling to place her eyes without flinching back. Their faces were similar masks, set in grim disapproval that remained unspoken but shouted in every line of their bodies, their eyes, that same silence.

Cid had aged gracefully, becoming stockier and less gruff with the gentle restraint of his assistant and unspoken partner, Shera, the very woman he had named his latest airship after. The nameless words between them, she wondered if they would ever be said aloud between the captain and his subordinate who willingly waited, patiently waited, for him to come around. His hair was peppered with white at the sides, lending him a distinguished air and his already lined face was creased with wrinkles on the brow and about his pale, grey-blue eyes. For once, no cigarette hung from his moisture lacking lips. His clothes were of course, rumpled, with the scarf he seemed to favour but was forever cursing as it ended up blowing back in his face at the worst moments when flying the skies.

He had thought of her like the little sister, if not the daughter, he had never had. She was fond of the gruff, plain speaking captain and had often spent her moments talking about her wish to see the world, from so high up.

He had cried for her, when she thought he didn't know how to weep for fear of losing what little control he had left over his own life. That he had come out here with only the vague knowledge that she had to go to this place, to find clues to monster populace resurfacing.

This place.

She looked to the horizon, the trees clustered about the squatting bones, ruins of where a temple had once stood. It was here, where the world met the sky she had spoken with the Planet and managed to unlock secrets of herself, her destiny. It was here, on the crux of this sacred spot she had also come to realise that her dreams were real, and she had only been hotly denying the truth in the hope of another day, of more time.

Aerith swallowed hard, tucking her arms about herself. Faintly, she realised none of the men were looking inclined to start walking towards this place and as she stepped forward, not a single one moved from their spot. Quizzically she looked back, "What are you waiting for?"

"This place," Cloud said, before being unable to find the words and trailing off with a helpless shrug.

"I don't understand, what makes you all so hesitant?"

"This place is where you fell down…" Vincent looked across at Cloud who hung his head, cheeks burning with shame. "Where events happened that escalated that day."

"That day," the blond whispered helplessly.

"Oh…" She murmured.

"Don't take it all personal like, but we can't go back there." Cid fixed her with a look and she hoped briefly he was going to say something opposite to what he did, "Not one of us. It's painful, for us all. You've been gone, you've come back and some things, they're for you alone. So here's as far as we go, little flower, and we'll wait here for you too."

"You'll send me off into that place alone?" She gawped. It was precisely that moment she started to wonder if she should have accepted Tifa's offer of help instead of pointing out that the orphans needed someone, the business, and the flowers to be tended…

Men!

"Understand what he's trying to say, please," Cloud pleaded, eyes on her, still bright, still looking to her for the answers for life; she dreaded that look in their eyes sometimes. "It's not that we wouldn't if we could, but we can't, we just can't trespass there."

"There's nothing there."

"It doesn't matter. Maybe you can't sense it," Vincent folded his arms and looked away from her, the horizon and all of it, to the blinding sun high in the sky, ruby eyes squinting shut, "But to us, it's plain as day that we're not for that place. You're just wasting time, arguing over it."

"But…"

"Hurry back. We'll wait."

Vincent seemed to chop off all argument and she felt her inner temperature rising, bringing colour to her cheeks that were already heavily tanned. Instead of glaring at him, or looking for support she stiffened her back with her customary stubborn will and set off towards the bones of a place she had left behind long ago.

Each step, taking her through the grass and through the trees brought monsters to bay. She could see them behind the trunks and in the shrug, their eyes gleaming with captured light but not a single one moved against her. Quite the opposite, they seemed most content to watch her, a bygone figure of a bygone past that lay forever beyond their reach and her heart twisted with sympathy.

Probably, this was why she could never really raise a hand against monsters well except with only the utmost mercy. In her heart, where she locked it all away, she knew they were once Cetra like she, that they once heard the Planet clearly instead of an infuriating garble to their detuned ears, a side effect of the plague, the virus from the skies.

Once, someone among them had played with dolls as their mother called them in for the afternoon. Someone among them had once painted skies and sunsets and the stars above. Someone among them may have created music, hymns or beautiful songs that spoke to the wind. Someone among them was just like someone she knew, or just like her.

So as she walked for the place where the world caved in on itself in the absence of the Cetra made structure, she smiled and gently waved her fingers to the monsters, the wolves, the bugs and the poor creature struck between bull and man. Only within feet of the place where it had once stood, her steps grew quickly leaden and she slowed, stumbling across herself with a lack of grace that wasn't her at all. The sounds of the forest and the eyes of the creatures faded back and she stared without thought at the small bridge, wooden slats and twisted rope that lead into the place where the Temple was.

She knew she'd once laid here in a strange ecstasy, her ears captured by the heartbeat, the voice of the Planet as it crooned to her. She was the beloved of a whole alien world that watched her from afar.

Her eyes rose to where the hole was and she started walking across the swaying bridge, a chasm deep and endless seeming cut into the earth around where the Temple had been. She supposed in the days when humans and monsters hadn't achieved the abilities needed to fly, that it was a suitable defence mechanism for the temple, to cut the bridge so no outsiders could enter.

But before such things could be employed, they had passed away leaving only caretakers to wander like ghosts in the halls of a crumbling and weed choked prison.

Thoughts of a strange rotund man in purple flooded back to her and she paused on the brink, looking to the heights where steps should have fled up to, reaching for the stars above. That was right, there had been a fellow decked out in purple, with a strange growth of hair on his face, talking to her in… pictures and feelings.

He was dead, too.

Then it was that her eyes slowly fell down to the chasm, the gulf of separation from the heights of yesterday to the stark reality of today. The pit yawned vast, the sides ragged with outcrops of rock still barren of any form of weed life.

It was down there that she had curled up.

Why was she curled over, defending her face? There had been someone, crouched over her, flailing with his fists. Then, there was nothing, fading away into her skin and oblivion but the word had lived on. His name, the name of the man who had beaten her so viciously, came quickly to mind.

"Cloud?" she said softly.

She dumped her jacket and turned to clamber down the walls to the bottom, no mean feat when wearing a full skirt and a particularly awkward cowl front shirt, all in crème and all just begging to be dirtied up beyond repair (and directly into acidic comments from Tifa about her not being a washer woman.)

It was almost to the bottom when she lost consciousness. She didn't even feel the thud of her head on the rocks at the bottom.

"What are you looking at?"

She looked away, her strange thoughts subsiding into the presence of now. The woman stood by her shoulder was taller than she, a man with a face as familiar as each breath she took by the tall woman's side. She looked from one to the other with slowly forming recollections. Another figure, with her dark hair like the weave of night, hair that both she and the man had, and green eyes that sang of life yet despite such vibrancy, the face was worn and lined by cares and woes.

Those eyes drew her and pinned her, more than the strange reptilian like eyes of the tall woman with the long pale hair. She smiled faintly, apologetically almost as she turned back from the construction of the temple.

"I am sorry; I was away with the fairies."

"Addle-pated sister," the man said in amusement and she found herself colouring, but amused too. He had called her such since childhood. It was a warm glow that she welcomed.

"I can't help it, this plot of land; it's so close to the Planet." She laughed, "Don't you feel at all giddy with it? I do."

"A little," he confessed and she was laughing too.

"Children," the stern faced woman chided, hands folded serenely at her waist as she came to stand at her side. The dark hair was worn twisted about a tiara of a kind, a special headdress worn by the Priestesses of their culture, those with the greater skill to speak to the Planet. Priests wore similar artefacts but about their lower faces. Her headband was designed to scroll about her eyes with stars and tendrils of clouds.

One day, she would wear a headdress like this and turn her face away from mundane matters to spin the earth, the delve the greenheart and to speak with the Planet, sing with it and pray with it so those prayers would ring from the furthest star. She, like this proud woman at her side, would give her life up to become a caretaker for the Planet and the future of their race and culture.

She was smiling.

"But," the woman continued, "The construction is coming along far quicker than we had expected."

"A tomb," the sultry voice of the taller woman throbbed, "A final resting place for that which should never have been."

She felt a little stab of resentment and turned to watch her brother, the man, curl his arm about those thin shoulders of the pale ghost. The golden eyes swelled with tears and she instantly felt ashamed of herself for even that brief stabbing agony of jealousy, the dark thorn in her whitest heart.

"Do not be sad," her brother said softly, "It will all come for the best, you shall see."

"Arkilles is right," she said with confidence, to try and cover for that small blunder only she could know of, "This place will entomb that evil forever and you shall never have to be afraid again."

"Will it really?"

She found herself staring into the golden eyes and nodded, her loose dark hair forming bouncing ringlets about her slender, oval face. "Yes."

"The temple is a puzzle," the older woman chimed, green eyes fixed on the labour and construction site, "it is intricate and set between both Space and Time."

"How is this so? Why, is anyone solves it, they can just walk away wi-"

"Not so, do not discredit our knowledge so, child." She smiled, skin wrinkling into laughter lines beneath the upper mask, "The puzzle is a dangerous toy to try and trick. When you solve even a mere section of it, it grows smaller. The temple being the whole puzzle shrinks. In order to retrieve the star jewel, they must sacrifice their own life, defeating the object of gaining the jewel. Do you see? We do not hide precious baubles in plain sight for little cause. Fret not; we know that which we do."

"…As you say, Honoured Daughter," the woman murmured.

Arkilles shot her a look and she sighed slightly. She had no clue as to what else to say, so she turned her attention to the land they had chosen for this temple. It was a lush land, of grass and verdant trees thickening the ground from mountain high to the shores where the sea ravaged and ate the land. The temple was hidden in a grove of trees, tucked away from the sight of predators and marauders who may pass by.

It was invariably close to the Planet, for all the places she had visited across the world, none had been so close to the voice of the world as this spot and so it was that those who would guard the jewel with spells to extend their lives, would ever be in touch with the Planet.

It made her a little sad, to contemplate that their isolation might indeed cut them off from any kind of civilised mode of speech, but also made her envious at how close they would become entwined with the world.

"It is an honour," the older woman said softly.

She started, surprised that her inner most motivations had been reasoned out by the woman stood beside her. The woman laughed gently, covering her mouth delicately to do so.

"You shouldn't read my thoughts," she muttered grumpily.

"I did not, your face registers every emotion that you feel." She chuckled, "It is a good thing to know such simplicity still exists in the world."

"Are you calling me simple, now?"

"Well, simple and pure, not simple and stupid. You worry too much, this place is good."

"I… I suppose… oh, what's that?"

She pointed with a slender finger, shocked a little at how thin it was – didn't she enjoy eating like tomorrow would never arrive? It pointed toward a slab of rock, followed by several others, being manoeuvred into the pit of the temple. On the slabs were intricate carvings of some event, with side views of people engraved in the rock as well as something falling from the sky?

"That is a warning," the older woman said softly, "And should dire events come to occur, the last empty slab will record everything. One of the scribes we have chosen to guard this place will record it, and we… and whatever may have become of the world."

"Why?"

"As fool proof as the temple is, to the naked eye, there is a possibility it may be breached into. The warning stands, for future generations, against malicious use of the jewel. To guard it, when you or I have gone."

"We'll pass the knowledge down though, won't we? Through the Teachings?"

"One day, maybe there will be no Teachings to pass."

"What!" Again, shock registered quickly on her face and the woman soothed her with a hand to her shoulder, rubbing against the bone and skin. "But…"

"I said, maybe. It is not certain, but best to cover all possibilities, right?"

"…"

"Now, tell me, what worries you really?"

Nervously she tucked a ringlet of dark hair back behind a slightly pointed ear and then she glanced, just a touch nervously, towards the walking figures of the pale woman and Arkilles. Her baby brother no longer, should she no longer worry for his wellbeing?

"I just… do not trust her."

"Your trust is and always has been, hard to earn."

"…I just have the worst kind of feeling when I look at her."

"Oh?" Those green eyes were speculative, scourging her to the depths of which she was, "Is it because there really is something you find fault with her for… or is it because she loves your brother, and he loves her?"

"W…What?" She hissed, "No, nothing of the sort!"

"Is it not? You were the centre of his 'universe' as I recall from your childhood together. His eldest sister, she who could do no wrong. Now he has another for that pedestal of his…"

"I don't need to hear you analyse my life, Honoured Daughter, I… I'm going back to the boats."

She turned with a whirl of her traditional skirt and began making her way towards the forest, ignoring the sudden and angry tears in her eyes. The gaze of those penetrating green eyes faded from her back the further she broke into the shrub and fought through it. The sting of branches, slender and supple whipping back into her face brought no relief from the nagging pain in her heart.

It was true; she had once been the focal point of her brother's attention as a rising star, a sure candidate for the honoured and beloved post of Handmaiden, then on towards Priesthood. She was a Handmaiden now, still learning the ways of the Planet and her own talents.

But then, the woman has arrived on wings of silver and everything had changed, her whole world had changed about her and soon enough her beloved little brother had begun to fade from her side to the side of another. No longer was that 'pedestal' hers and no longer could she have his and all others love from their small community. Not since she had come to be.

She knew this was irrational jealousy and that the woman, like many things, would be sure to pass. This was all momentary, transitory to her natural path to being a Priestess and wearing the mask.

Even with the words stinging in her ears and her own logical explanation for such feelings, she was still unwilling to set them so easily aside. She felt so uneasy around the woman that sometimes she wanted to weep, sometimes she wanted to cry. Never had she tried to explain this before to anyone, not until that moment at the temple and to be scorned so for her own feelings…

Her skirt caught on the scrub and she tugged at it, weeping and trying to get free. It was insanity!

"Why did she even come here?" She sobbed, turning into the wraithlike hands of branches that scratched and held her, shaking her until her storm of weeping grew fierce and she fought. She fought against their restraints and tugged, writhed even, in their monstrously strong grip. "Why!"

Voices called to her, she did not know them, but they made sense, they called from a distance with the sound of a hollow wind and she wept.

"Aerith?"

Earth? Air? Which was it… which was she?

"Aerith, wake up…"

The pressure of fingers should bruise her delicate skin and after another hearty shake, she opened her eyes to a world of white and blue skies, the silver of an airship and faces of three men crowded about her as she stood knee deep in the water. A dull pain throbbed on the side of her head and she stared at them.

"Are you alright?"

She knew them. The vision faded, pungent and strong still and as she opened her mouth to explain, she shook her head wearily and waited in silence for the tears to stop.

They took their time.

The blanket wasn't exactly clean, nor was it exactly dirty and it smelt of the engine, of the air and beyond so she snuggled into it, glad of the warmth. Her clothes, wet, were hung to dry on the warm wall that was right next to the engine room where she could hear the workers piling coal into the engines to keep them working. She was clad in an overlong workers shirt, blue and hemmed with white. Cid proclaimed that Shera loved the colours and had bulldozed him into making all uniforms match – but she would have bet gil just as easily on it being that he had done so, simply because she liked the colours.

Her hands were wrapped about a mug of cocoa, not made lovingly from thick cream and real chocolate like Tifa would have done, but from granules of hot chocolate fished from a particularly suspicious looking tube in the cupboard in the mess. She didn't argue, it was hot and it brought to mind the dark eyed girl and banished the strange disjointed sensation that was rife in the air about her.

The three men watched her, sat in the captain's room on the Shera.

They had found her, wading to her hips in the water, crying but with blank eyes, misted over with green so it appeared as though she had no pupil in her eyes. They said they had glowed brightly, blazing like the lifestream. She didn't know what to say, only allowing herself to be led in silence to the ship where the tears had slowly trickled to a stop.

"The temple," she said softly, breaking into the silence and the hum of the engine, "It was there that they hid secrets."

"What kind of secrets?"

She flicked a glance from the cocoa to Vincent, "Many secrets. Old secrets, about this Planet, about my race." Aerith took a deep breath, "I went there, looking for any answers the Planet might have to give me. It gave me answers, alright. I fell, into the pit."

"That explains the blood," Cloud murmured, looking a strange shade of white.

She guessed he was trying to forget his own abusive actions that had led to her being injured and his extended coma at the Temple and later, Gongaga village. Gentle fingers probed the wound which had mostly healed over, the best she could do when shaken from her own natural calm. It was crusty with blood, but a remnant of where she likely struck her head on the unfinished rocks at the bottom of the chasm.

"Right," she agreed, "But I don't think I passed out. I think it showed me a vision, but unlike witnessing something, I was a part of that vision. In the vision, I saw the Temple when it was being constructed."

"That was likely a long time ago then," Vincent said, tugging on his scarf.

"I think it was… around the time of the Calamity, before the Wounding of the Planet. There were a lot of people there, Cetra, all speaking to the Planet, as well as a woman who I knew to be some kind of Priestess. I don't think it's a formalised religion, so much as a scale of people who are devoting their life and future to the Planet. I… revered her greatly. I knew that whoever I was in this vision was also destined to advance among that religious hierarchy with the Planet. There were others… and the murals."

"Murals?"

"Don't you remember?" She glanced between the men, feeling surprised.

"Hah, surprisin' that we don't remember yet she does, but can't recall how t' cook without burnin' it t'cinders!"

"Thank you, Cid," Aerith murmured dryly, blushing to her hairline as the Captain chortled that dirty little laugh he saved for embarrassing her – and she was embarrassed pretty easily. "But he's right. I am a bit… shocked? In the Temple, the room with the murals was where the Black Materia was kept. It was also where they recorded the events of the Calamity."

"Jenova."

"Precisely. And some of the slabs were vacant… I couldn't make out what they said, but the old Priestess said they would be written on in the future, for future generations to read and understand what had come to pass. But…"

Cloud sighed, "But only you survived."

"Yes. A remnant of a remnant, I suppose. But it was enough, I knew enough then." She looked into her cocoa. "I don't know what the Planet was trying to tell me, but it seems like I have a way to go before I know exactly what the message is."

"And about Yuffie and the attack?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "But I think it has to do with… remnants. Fragments of things. I can't place my finger on it. I think… it's something I said once, or something I did, that will be the key to Yuffie. The key to the rest of it? Those riddles lie with the Black Materia."

"The Black Materia was lost in the North Pole, along with Sephiroth," Cloud sighed and scrubbed a hand through his blond hair, "So, what do we do?"

"Go look for it," Vincent shrugged.

"You make it sound like it's a picnic."

"Only if you insist on gingham blankets," came back the dry, unruffled reply.

Aerith giggled into a hand, the expression on Cloud's face was inexplicably hilarious at Vincent's rebuttal. But there was truth in his statement; they would have to go look for it. The riddle, the clues to these attacks and the visions lay in the materia itself. A riddle she had to unravel, especially if she wanted to sleep comfortably at night.

"I think he's right," she said softly, earning a hard look from Cloud and a loud guffaw from Cid, who seemed to think her destroying Cloud's hopes of peace and quiet to be absolutely hilarious. "No, really… we'll go find it."

"Are you serious?"

"Very."

"What about Tifa!"

"Oh, she'll come along too of course." Aerith winked, smiling broadly, "You know she won't let me go anywhere without adult supervision."

"I'm an adult!" Cloud sputtered in mortification, and she laughed with the rest of them.

"ACHOO!"

She rubbed her nose with a finger, feeling sheepish, especially after blowing away all the paper cut outs she'd spent hours doing with Denzel and Marlene. Her eyes watered a little.

"Nice sneeze, Tifa!" Denzel laughed.

"I'm sorry," she replied, blushing.

"It's okay, I'll pick them up!" Marlene piped up cheerily and began hunting for the paper pieces as Tifa dug about in her pocket for her handkerchief. "Are you getting a cold?"

"No, probably some beautiful girl talking about me somewhere," Tifa grinned back, wiping her nose.

…or talking me into trouble… again… she thought wryly.