-: Heart Less Love :-
Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before;
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity
of this still life...
-Hide and Seek – Imogen Heap-
Chapter Thirteen: Distance
She trembled.
For a moment, sanity peeked through the curtain.
For a moment, she stood on the outside, watching herself through the slick glass that kept them apart.
For a moment, she beat on the glass and screamed.
But that moment passed, the tremors in her hands vanished and with a cry, she lifted the shuriken overhead and with a sudden, sharp jerk, plunged it down. Fear fled, only anger filled her, pain was muted to a distant buzz in her mind. The blades of her shuriken were sharp as a razor, cutting through skin, muscle and organs with terrible accuracy.
For a second, she almost felt the single tear sliding down her remorseless cheek.
She was falling face first onto the floor, she was falling slowly, and when she struck the floor the water rippled outwards from her in a pattern of concentric circles, fading slowly into the smooth sheet of nothingness that the water represented. Her hair soaked up the water, her skin bathed in the rotten sickness of it. But her eyes, that she closed eyelids over, burned.
She was bleeding, she knew that, but every drop from her veins was a sour victory.
The laughter of her mother destroyed the sanity that had been skirting nervously around her, the shards of it scattering and gone...
It was Tifa's face; that lovely face filled with fear and apprehension that jerked Aerith out of her brooding. It caught her heart and filled it with dread, a feeling she wasn't entirely accustomed to still. It was the hand that held hers, shaking helplessly and the words that tripped over themselves, trying to apologise, trying to tell her not to look too hard, trying to buffer it.
Vincent had come for her, as she had spent the evening in that melancholic state, and told her that Yuffie had been found injured in the ShinRa mansion and her healing talents were needed. The name appendaged to the mansion had already given her enough fear in her life, that stepping inside of it seemed unreal. But down the staircase, down the winding steps back to that place where they had found Vincent in his slumber, where they had found the hidden laboratories and libraries of previous scientists who had lived with cobwebs and sinister mysteries; down here she trembled too.
Yuffie was curled over on her front, face to the dirt, a small puddle of blood under her middle as she lay partially on her side. The reason for the odd posture was quickly made clear to Aerith's eyes, that being the shuriken which was half embedded into the ninja's middle, the sharp blade of the weapon known as Conformer was buried deep enough to cause serious damage.
Tifa babbled something in near hysteria, and she understood why.
Kneeling at Yuffie's side, she put a cool hand out to the unconscious girl's brow and felt for fever. She felt curiosity more than anything.
Had this been how she had looked too, crumpled in death on a crystalline altar, pale and distant? Only the difference here was, Yuffie had managed to miss a vital artery, and Aerith's skill with magic had grown almost exponentially since her death and sojourn in the Lifestream. The blood dripped slowly; every so often her heightened senses fuelled by this strange fear could hear it.
"Tifa, can you please find Cid and tell him I will be using the San on the ship? Also, find Vincent and Cloud; tell them to rig a litter so we can take Yuffie from this place."
"But..."
"Please. Do as I say, for Yuffie." She didn't look at Tifa; the sting of those words was still very fresh. She didn't have to look up either to know the mixed emotions that would be vying for dominance in those claret eyes.
"Alright, I will," Tifa said, in a voice close to tears.
Aerith squeezed her eyes shut as Tifa fled up the winding stairs, hands clenching as she did so. She hated this, she didn't know how to apologise and if she couldn't figure it out soon, they'd only end up hurting each other even more. Sure, Aerith had always known that couples fought once in a while, but this was hurting her and Tifa, more so because of their unique circumstances.
Would harsh words be the last things they say to each other, should a calamity befall them again?
She focused her attention on Yuffie, somewhat glad of a distraction to the mess she was making of her personal life yet again. Her cool hands moved to the blade buried in the stomach area, and she tilted her head. "Yuffie, what happened...?"
"Brother, what happened?"
She blinked slowly, less startled by the voice than a normal person would have been. It didn't help that she recognised the voice. "K'listo?" she said softly.
Her hands had his blood on them, her hands shook gently. His face was pale and his eyes fevered, burning with hidden emotions. "Sister..."
She looked at her hands, Yuffie's blood stained them, and then she looked towards Yuffie's slack features, trying to see the remnants of Arkilles there. Nothing, just silence hanging there between them.
"Why? Why would you do this to yourself?!"
"...why would this happen again, and again," Aerith whispered.
"She was so close; she was in my head... I had to get out; I had to... save me, K'listo, save her..."
She reached for the shuriken again, clasping fingers about the safe part of it, the inner ring. Her other hand went to Yuffie's middle as with a stirring of the cold air, she drew her healing magic from inside and around her.
"Save me, Aerith."
She almost started; Yuffie's eyes were half open, blank of anything, just staring at her. The dull violet grey chilled her to the core, looking back down. She had the distinct and creepy sensation that she was seeing the Yuffie she knew through a dangerous fog. She had spoken, that was for sure, but there was no other sign of life, apart from the eyes closing again. Never once had the body she tended to broken from the slumber-like state.
On the verge of panic, she drew the shuriken from Yuffie and threw it down to the side. It clanged, blood spattering on the rocks of the floor, hard enough to see in the dimness of the corridor. Yuffie didn't stir, the wound in her middle slowly knitting back together with a sort of fascinating ease, forcing out dirt and shards of glass, the skin writhing and knotting as it healed.
"Yuffie, where are you?" She whispered hoarsely.
"Aerith!" there was a call from behind her, and she turned in time to see Cloud and Vincent coming towards her, Tifa just behind them. In their hands was an old fashioned litter with straps to help hold Yuffie in place as they clambered up the stairs. Neither man was overtly dressed up, Vincent in a comfortable looking shirt and trousers with those Turk-style boots. Cloud wore slacks, as he called them, an open necked shirt in blue and baggy jeans with a pair of sneakers much like those Tifa wore.
She shuffled to the side so they could help move Yuffie onto the litter, actually bothering to take note that Tifa wore a skirt and pretty shirt, her hair held up in clips from her face and neck. It looked like she had tried to make an effort to look appealing.
Aerith just watched her, and then looked down at her hands and the blood drying there.
As they worked to buckle Yuffie into place, she slowly took her hands and pressed them against her middle. She felt hollow. She felt broken, just where she was pressing.
She didn't realise they had stopped working to look at her. Aerith peeled her hands from her white dress, staring at the bloody imprint of her hands. She whispered, "I would give it all up... I would give it all, all of it, my future, my dreams and hopes, my pride..."
Tifa was there, hands firm and holding her shoulders, but above her loomed Cloud. She saw concern in his expression; she saw tears in his eyes. Her lips moved, frozen stiff but replaying the vivid memory. "Cloud... its okay... I did it!"
"Aerith?"
"I..." There was a blow from behind. Her sane mind told her that nothing had actually attacked her, but she fell forward anyway, Tifa's hands catching her from hitting her face against the rocky floor. "I'm dying... Tifa... my Tifa... I never told you... I never..." She outstretched her hand. There was ... someone there?
"Aerith, stop, Aerith, Rissy," the choking sobs were there. The choking of air, she couldn't breathe. She couldn't even cry, so she smiled. But there was someone there, who was it? Who was that person...? A hand reached out to her and she took it. It was cold. She couldn't see the glint of golden metal, she couldn't see the claw. There was only a hand.
She smiled, "I guess that makes both of us heroes now, right, Zack?"
A scream of agonised weeping tore the air, the shocked mutterings and she was sinking into the darkness of oblivion again. But he was still there, still watching over her. She didn't need the Lifestream to tell her that. In the dreams that came after, he was there, a bond.
His hand held out to her, his crooked smile, and he said in reply; "Well, I guess so."
...his dreams and pride... my future and wishes...
...Yuffie... Zack... Sephiroth... Scions of Jenova, descendants of her tainted blood by the radiation of Meteor.
How strange that I should think of them. Yuffie... Yuffie called to me...
Zack had resisted the darkness, Sephiroth had succumbed to it. Is it down to personality, or circumstance? Arkilles said there was another, said that scions of Jenova lay dormant for the most part. But Yuffie, like Sephiroth, has a high enough concentration of Jenova in her blood. It is high enough to hear the darkness.
Going to the far north to hunt for the Black Materia might be pointless.
If Yuffie...
...what happens to that hope I gave freely?
Zack, you always watched over me, I sometimes think you even guided me and those others to one another. That sky, I love that sky I was afraid of, afraid of seeing and never seeing. I love the birds, the clouds, and the bright blue of it. I see your eyes in that sky; I see your pride and determination in those around me, and your dreams...
...I wish to see those dreams, to see that future. So please, help me... what should I do?
...I don't know what to do... I just... wanted some peace with Tifa, with my love and my life...
Zack... help...
She fumbled the flashlight, a sudden splurge of white crossing the bones of a skeleton strung up by the wire in the crown of its head, the scream she was going to give voice to dwindling away into an exhalation of shaky breath.
"Just how much lies down here?" Cloud was saying behind them.
"Catacombs of research, left untouched by the hands of man for years. How long has it been since man tried to step into that province where Gods and Cetra may only brush across, how long since their sins came to squat belligerent under the dark folding wings of forgetfulness?" Vincent took a breath before continuing; in such a tone that even Tifa paused in her searching, the flashlight radiance only jittering a touch in her trembling hand. "Not for us are those demons or dark places, not for us those secrets and darker mysteries. Yet, down here we come anyway, intrepid or foolish mayhap we are, but further down to delve those secrets like precious gems from the bones of this earth."
"Poetic," Tifa said softly.
"Dark and dismal," Cloud sniffed, brushing a lump of rock with his toe, "And these rooms fit those words too well."
The catacombs of hidden research laboratories under the ShinRa mansion extended deep into the ground. It was impossible to say just how much lay hidden here, how much was choked in the dust of the forgotten rooms. Papers lay on tables, forgotten by human hands, the computer screens blank and dead and the air itself stank of musty decay. Shelves of bottles with liquid half dried into sticky, viscous fluids; the half twisted lumps of materia that had seen better days, charred, melted and left to one side.
"Down here was where Lucretia worked tirelessly, where the genes were stored and malformed, where they played at creation."
"Sephiroth knew of this place, I wonder why he didn't destroy it," she asked, unsure if there was an answer.
Vincent supplied one however, "I wonder if there was some part of him, buried deep, that knew this was where his real mother had worked hard. I wonder if he could not bring himself to destroy that last connection with her."
"Bonds," Tifa mused.
"Mankind, what a cruel race we are." She swung her head to where Cloud was pressed near to the wall, studying upright, human sized tubes, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. The blue eyes were less lost these days, a kind of strong determination marking him. Yet, for all his new found confidence, here he seemed like a lost boy once again, framed with a spiked halo of gold. Slowly, his hand came up to touch the tube. "We take, we destroy, and we never give anything back to this world. What are we, to think of ourselves as anything other than a parasite? I imagine Sephiroth saw that..."
"You're sounding like him," she retorted hotly.
"Maybe. But I can understand some of it... I can understand why the Geo-Stigma occurred. The pain of this world, the pain it must have felt." His fingers slid on the slick outside. "How many things must Mankind change until we are happy? Is nothing in this world to be accepted at face value?"
"Cloud..."
She looked at Vincent, and then echoed his calling of the blonds' name. "Cloud, don't think that way."
"Back there, Aerith said something."
Tifa shuddered a little. Watching the love of her life print herself with blood in some kind of obscure, helpless pain, it had been nothing short of horrific. The wide green eyes, sightless but seeing, the bloodless lips and blackout... But, what had any of that to do with the words she had said? "I don't understand."
"Her pride, her dreams..." She could swear there were tears in his brilliantly blue eyes, "Words I had heard before, long before she spoke them."
"From who?"
"Zack, you remember him, don't you?"
"The young man who had come to Nibelheim, the Soldier." The black hair and flashing violet-blue eyes, the cocky grin and the self assured air he used with enviable ease. The young man who had opened up the world for Aerith, shown her the blue depth of sky and promised to sail her heart across it someday. "I remember... Aerith's first love." Even saying that hurt no longer, she was surprised a little with herself.
"He was my best friend, my inspiration. I met him before the mission to Nibelheim; I was surprised at what a friendly person he was, considering he was in Soldier. He was everything I had wanted to be, so when I came back here, I was so ashamed at myself, that I hid my face from the townsfolk, and you, the person I had made a promise with before I left. You'd changed so much!" He laughed sadly, "And before long, that world of yesterday went up in flames. I know, I tried to kill Sephiroth after I caught up with you and Zack. You were both terribly hurt. I thought you were dead... I tried..." His hands clenched. "And when I next came awake, I was in green liquid, floating. In one of these."
Tifa studied the tube he was close by, feeling aghast. How did it feel to be trapped inside there?
"Next to me, Zack floated too, but I think he was more awake than me. His hair was much longer... what had happened? Why? Then when I next awoke, I was in a truck, Zack smiling down at me. Where was I going to go, what was I going to do? A paper he had found held the date... five years had passed. Five years of nothingness in that liquid. Five years that Cloud Strife had been dead to the world. I learned Sephiroth was dead, as we travelled across the country, on the boat, toward Midgar where we would find answers, find retribution. I was more alert each day, but the mako poisoning in my system was severe. Zack had fought his off.
"Then at the cliffs, overlooking Midgar, their soldiers caught up with us. Two hundred or more, easily. He told me to hide..." there were tears, she saw, running down his cheeks, tears of anger, self loathing and regret. She could sense that much at least, pity and sympathy welling in her throat. "He told me we'd get into Midgar; go see his girl because she had somewhere that we could stow away until the heat had blown over. But, even though he fought like a whirlwind of death, he was caught by too many bullets, and ShinRa left. Until it was him and me, on that precipice, the rain beating down... the rain was hot, how strange... but his eyes, they were so alive and so determined. His blood on my face as he pressed me to his chest, as he gave me his sword and said, 'My pride, my dreams – I give these to you.'"
Cloud ran his hand over the tube, looking at Tifa and Vincent. She found herself without words to say as he continued quietly, "Did Zack know Aerith was an Ancient? His death, she must have known the moment he had died, that awful pain of losing someone you love. Maybe I was drawn to Aerith because of his wishes, because she needed someone to stand on the shoulders of to reach those stars, at that time. She needed us all, in her own way. But there, saying those words... they were Zack. Before, at her church where the water lies, on the day of the Gospel Rain that took the Geo-Stigma away, I could have sworn I saw them together."
"You're telling me, that Zack is somehow part of all this mystery too?" Tifa demanded in disbelief.
"Bonds," he coolly replied, "Bonds run deeper than any magic or science."
"But he's dead!"
"So was Aerith."
"But... she's Cetra!"
"And Zack was Soldier," Vincent rumbled finally in his dusty voice, making them break off arguing to look at him. "Zack, a successor to the genetic material of Jenova... it is entirely possible that he could stay as a phantasm to guide her."
"This place... it holds nothing but pain for anyone," Tifa curled her lip, "Even Yuffie was hurt because of this stinking mansion."
"Pain, but a necessary one."
"Stuff it, Vincent!" She looked down at the flashlight, "...and stuff the rest of it too."
"Tifa," Cloud's voice was soft, "You don't forget your first love. You simply build the foundation of your true love from those memories of it."
"Huh?"
Cloud smiled at her as she looked up, "Zack, he was a true friend, he was brave, loyal and kind, not to mention charming in his way. Looking at Zack, at that kindness he showed to me, to Aerith... it's easy to see echoes of him in the woman you grew up to be."
"Huh!?" She blushed.
"Don't think of it as Aerith clinging to a past love, because it's not, it's different and you know that. Zack protected her in her darkest times, and now you do his job too. She just misses someone dear to her..."
"Protect... her...?"
"In the Lifestream, watching, holding her up. Tears for a love she could never confess, tears for a love she knows is true, and can never touch again... a shoulder to weep on," Vincent touched her shoulder. "Nothing to be jealous of."
"I... I'm not jealous!" Her face was burning, she was sure of it.
"Mmm, speaking of that, how long until you two apologise and stop making it uncomfortable for the rest of us?"
"I..." words failed her.
"Who started the argument anyway?" Cloud moved back from the tube. His expression was touched with a hint of amusement. "Girls fighting mean men stay wisely away."
"I started it, I was frustrated because she speaks in riddles and tells me nothing at all!"
"Isn't that always her way?"
"I know, I know," she sighed and sat on the edge of a table, "I really do know, but this time it could be so much more dangerous. She doesn't realise she's playing with fire."
"Maybe..."
"You don't have to agree so readily, Vincent." Her fringe covered her eyes, filled with doubt. "Building from a foundation, huh? ...maybe I should apologise..."
Cloud opened his mouth to reply, but a book to the face discouraged him, soon turning the subject to lighter matters of how lost they were. She laughed, knowing he had been about to say something totally dumb... and feeling lighter for the first time in a long while...
She would apologise.
...don't let it control you... don't let it take you... return to us... return to us all... don't let it control you... don't let it...
She cracked her eyes open, just a small fraction. She was in one of the rooms of the mansion, the linen smelled fresh and there was the vague first highlight of dawn peeping through just-drawn curtains, illuminating the figure that was knelt by her bedside, hands clasped and head bent.
"Aerith, what are you doing?"
The ancient jerked her head up in surprise, those bright green eyes searching hers with a wild desperation, then she smiled in a tremulous kind of way, "I was just... you were so cold. I was starting to wonder if you would leave. If you were ready to die..."
"I'm Ninja... I'm always ready to die." Yuffie sat up, hand on her middle. There wasn't even a ridge of a scar.
"No one wishes to die," Aerith murmured, still knelt, face distant.
Yuffie's sharp eyes picked out the handprint of blood on the front of Aerith's dress, so her own act of violence had awakened those memories. Sharper still, she also found the Conformer lying on its side by the dresser, her heavy travelling cape on the door peg. Bowls of water turned pink with blood took up spots on the small bedside table; rags of linen stained heavily that draped over the cracked rims of those bowls.
"Really? But sometimes a death is necessary. A sacrifice or offering, an appeasement."
"That's crazy talk, Yuffie."
"You know, I hear it... the darkness..." her hands were bandaged and she drew them up to her face slowly, covering her eyes. The blackness inside her cupped palms was familiar; it was a darkness she had created, not this strange madness which washed over her.
"Yuffie? What darkness? What does it say to you?" Aerith's voice had changed tone, and Yuffie lowered her hands to look at her with a shading of disbelief.
"It tells me to take revenge, it tells me to kill... It tells me secrets and lies..." Yuffie swallowed a sob, and demanded just as quickly as she did, "You sound like you already knew!"
"I was told..." The ancient looked evasive.
"Told? Told by who? ...Oh, I see, that dead guy in the cave, what did he tell you?"
"Nothing! It's really nothing!" Aerith shook her head.
"Liar!" Yuffie lunged for her, grabbing her by the wrists, shaking her frail body as if the answers would come falling from her, "Liar! Tell me! Tell me!"
"Yuffie, don't do this!"
"What's wrong with me?! Tell me what's wrong with me!"
"...Before the war with Wutai, experiments were done on people who belonged to ShinRa. Experiments with Mako, and the cells of Jenova. Two separate projects were undertaken, The G and S projects. The results of the Gillian Project degraded quickly, and all too soon, died." Yuffie lowered Aerith's arms, hands still gripping those frail wrists and turned her head ever so slightly to see the figure in a dark hooded cape, watching them. She didn't know how else to explain it, but she knew two things: this figure was long dead, and Cetra.
"What's that to do with me?" She snapped.
The figure held up a hand, gloved in creaking black leather, silence coming as was bid apart from Aerith's occasional sob. "Project S was given a pure sample of the Jenova cells, but unlike the power of the Gillian specimens, that power was able to sustain his life-force. There was no power to create copies of a physical form. The true power of Jenova had lain in her ability to change not only the world around her, but bend the lives of others to her will. The specimen from Project S was Sephiroth, and as the last carrier of those experimental genes, Cloud Strife. But... once upon a time, Jenova had been a living, breathing humanoid. The radiation of the black materia in her close proximity had caused this fallen rider of the universe to become crazed. When it was time, she was trapped in a geological stratum, for the good of this world, fossilised into the lifestream. Yet, she left a legacy behind, that of her children. Half Cetra... half Jenova. True inheritors of her will and powers."
"I still don't..." Yuffie growled.
"You are her scion, Kisaragi."
"...wha...what!?" The ninja turned to Aerith, "That's a lie!?"
"No," whispered the fragile woman, her eyes large and pleading, "It's true. Your mother may have been a remnant of Cetra, but far along back your father's line... there is Jenova in you! It's true!"
"It's a LIE!" screamed Yuffie, throwing Aerith on the floor, "A lie; a hideous twisted lie! I am not a monster! I'm not!"
Take Vengeance. Take it, love it and let it grow.
"Mother?" Yuffie murmured, turning to try and find the source of those words, "...mother, where are you?"
"No, Yuffie, don't listen!"
"Shut up!" The kick to the ancient's ribs met with a satisfying crack, and trembling, from head to foot, she spat as the veil of red temper covered her vision again, "Always preaching, always thinking you know best. I'm going to do you, me and this world a favour! I am going to do what should have happened if you hadn't interfered you worthless excuse for an Ancient!"
"Yuffie," Aerith sobbed, "No, please... don't let it control you..."
"Control me? Ever thought that maybe I just said and am doing what everyone else is too chicken shit to do? You disgust me... lie there and rot... the nourishment for the earth is about all the good you'll ever do." She turned and picked up her Conformer, then the cloak. "Oh, and Aerith? Don't even bother trying to follow me. Live your last days happily... and in ignorance."
She slammed the door shut behind her, hollow and echoing through the ShinRa mansion...
Cid sighed and slammed the glass down on the bar, "Man that hits the spot, hard days graft and all I'm gettin' is 'Hey Cid, do this'. Buncha bums should learn to do it themselves, y'hear what I'm saying!?"
"Quite..." the barman looked somewhat put upon, "Another?"
"Aye! And don't be skimping cause yer thinking I'm drunk cause I ain't so much as fuckin' tipsy, y'hear?!" Cid grumbled and held the glass loosely, and was in the act of raising it to his lips as a large detonation rang out, followed by several smaller ones. The glass in the windows of the bar shattered, spraying into the room and onto the startled customers, a massive rush of heat and smoke choking the air mere moments later.
Shocked, and struggling to his feet from where he'd been knocked from the rickety stool, Cid grabbed his pole arm and made haste for the broken windows, only to stare outside in total horror at the remains of his airship and the billowing gouts of flame and smoke that were being sent up into the air.
"That's my SHIP!" he bellowed.
She remembered, in the dimness of her mind, waiting on the floorboards and unable to move or draw full breath for the bones broken inside of her from the vicious kick of the ninja girl... she remembered, tears on her face;
"Rissy?" Tifa cried weakly.
And with a relived smile, she brushed hair from the pale face, "Right here."
"Where is everyone else? Why do my lungs hurt?"
The memory was fuzzy, but she knew the plane had crashed into the water, likely stunning the two girls - but the fear of drowning in the water from that dream had galvanised Aerith into waking action, whereas Tifa had just lay there limp. She related this in calm tones, adding, "Because you were dying."
"Dying?"
"Drowning... you weren't awake. The natural reflex is to breathe and when you've been stunned, instinct overrides reasonable thought. Your body doesn't tell you 'I might drown', you simply do the most natural thing and that is to breathe. I'm just glad I wasn't tired enough that I could swim and get you."
Then Tifa was laughing, laughing in the way of someone gripped by hysterics. "My hero!"
"Hero?" Aerith went a shade of red, "Stop teasing and get dry. I'm going to look for the plane, so stay here, alright?"
"I'll go-"
"No, you almost drowned." Aerith stood up, "For me, stay and rest, please?"
The wine dark eyes pleaded silently, but she firmed her jaw in response until Tifa sighed and lay back down in the wet sand, arms above her head, "Fine. I can never win against you anyway. Love must mean learning to lose an argument once in a while. Don't be long..."
"I won't be. I'll be back."
She started down the line of the beach, hair whipping in the chill winds of the night and some way along, she glanced back at Tifa and her fire, the glow on the face of sorrow's beauty and her heart clenched helplessly, a spasm in her chest with inexplicable fear. And sadly, she touched her necklace and murmured as tears slid down her cheeks, "Its close. So it won't be long at all, Teef. Not long at all, really..."
...and weeping, like the haunted ghost, she wandered alone under the stars in search of others...
"…Tifa… Tifa… TIFA!" she screamed. She would come.
…Tifa always came for her…
…always…