:: Heart Less Love::

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."
Martin Luther King, Jr

Part Eighteen: Anger

"Hello again, old friend."

Tifa came to a stop by the small cliff that overlooked Midgar. She was aware of the importance of this place; the sword that was rusty now, dug deeply into the earth and peering down over the broken ruins of a city she had called home for years. This was the place where Zack had died, and the sword thrust into the ground was his, and before Zack, it had been that of his mentor, Angeal. Tifa knelt briefly, touching her fingertips to her lips, then to the sword pommel. She had discussed this at length with Cloud, on various occasions, and once with Aerith. Whilst not as intimately connected with the legend that Zack was growing into being, he nevertheless had come to her village, had kept her from harm and had been the first love for Aerith. No jealousy remained in her heart, just glad acceptance. For every story that unfolded about Zack, she was filled now with regret that she had never known the exceptional young man better.

"Zack," she said quietly. "You know why I'm here, and why I'm talking to you. Aerith tells me you're still in the Lifestream, but that you can hear people if they call for you by name. I'm asking you just to listen for a little while, before I set out to do some very foolhardy things, things that will make Aerith angry and sad, but they are things only I can do to protect her. I'm not a Soldier, I don't have special powers or abilities and I'm not incredibly honed to martial perfection, like I was. But I am in love, and I want to try and at least put a wedge in the doorway, before it slams open and all hell breaks loose."

She sighed and smiled, pushing fingers through her fine, dark fringe. "You know, Zack, it's been a while since I properly looked Midgar over. It's become a real wreck, visited only by bad memories and ghosts of people who cannot bear to leave. Aerith tells me that it's because of the high amount of Mako being concentrated here. She says that ShinRa built their metropolis here because it was so high in natural effusions of the lifestream. You know, if I stood up and looked hard enough..."

Tifa did just that, using the pommel of the sword for balance and narrowing her eyes against the faint streaks of dawn light. She could pick out the old mako reactors, now forgotten and laid to rest. There was the scaffold of the old ShinRa tower, like a spidery collection of webs, atop which perched a cocoon of forgotten evils. The old Sister Ray cannon was still here too, beginning to rust over. Some of the old bolts and wiring had come loose, and it was draped into the grounds of the old sector 4 hangouts.

"I thought so, I can still see it," she murmured. The area in question was sector 7. She could still see the crush of the metal plates, all jammed in together as a clumsy, if compressed pile of rubbish. It was this that had torn away the lives of so many people, ruined business for many more. She still recalled that day, rushing for the wire and the hook that Barrett used to get them out of there. The smell of sweat on Cloud's skin and her frantic breathing interspersed with tears, sobbing as she bid a wretched farewell to those she had to leave behind. To Biggs, to Wedge, to Jessie; to her family and all the other unseen, shadowy members of Avalanche, to her beloved bar and to memories she had finally begun to craft from despair.

"It's still a god ugly place, Zack, even with the flowers growing back. That'll never change. Look, if you can see it, there are the warehouse scientific buildings they used to cover up the entrance to Deepground. If Yuffie has gone anywhere, it'd be there. I guess the Black Materia needs to resonate with the lifestream to bring out its powers." She lowered her hand from shading her eyes, and turned her attention back to the sword. "I have a favour to ask. Honour, dreams, pride; I have all these things and more. I have a cause to fight for. You might not hear me, you might not even be able to help me from where you are but... walk with me, in spirit Zack, and help me protect her. Help me somehow end all this, please..."

She spent a good couple of minutes staring at the sword, then jumped as in the distance a lone wolf howled, the hair on the back of her neck rising rapidly in response.

"...that's good enough for me," Tifa laughed shakily as she picked her backpack up, and took a quick sip of water from her canteen. Buckling it back into the slot reserved for hiking flasks, she set her jaw, "Alright then, let's get on with this."

It took me a long time to stand upright after those final events that horrible day.

I don't think you have any concept of the kind of pain it caused me. I was nothing but a wreck, the kind that you can't bear to tear your eyes off because it's so grotesque and so fascinating at the same time. I moved like a robot on automatic, I cleaned, cooked and rebuilt what I could from the ashes of another life.

How could you go and leave me? How could it have all come down to this?

I was nothing before you met me, Aerith. I was a girl filled with hate and anger, filled to the brim with bile I couldn't throw up. I wanted to die and drag the wretched world along with me. But you made me want to live; you made me want to be someone better. You were all I could think about, you were a morning and a sunset and all the daylight in-between, and when the stars came out, you would be the night sky, and you were the stars I hung my hopes upon.

I came here from Nibelheim, a long time ago. I was so young, new to this wide world and attempting to tough it out. Barrett and Jessie were kind to me after they found me exhausted and mentally lost. Sure, I know revenge isn't always the way to go but what they did offer me was a way to keep on my feet and a way to keep my head above the water that threatened to drown me.

I used some of my inheritance to open up the Seventh Heaven bar. I wasn't sure I even wanted to be a bartender to begin with, but that home building sensation gave me a new direction and purpose. The locals who came in for a drink became regulars, and those regulars became friends. As my business grew and the word of it spread throughout the slums, so did the small knot of Avalanche members, Biggs and Wedge who were like brothers I never had.

I loved them dearly, I found myself sometimes smiling when I caught my reflection in that big sheet of a mirror I had placed behind the racks of spirits in my bar. It looked fresh and uncertain; it looked different to those smiles of my childhood. I realised I was growing up, rather than simply growing older.

It was here that I also met Johnny. You never really met him or knew about him, and I don't really talk about him much. He was an ex-boyfriend; he'd left Nibelheim before Cloud had, long before. His family had sent him to business school in Midgar, but he hated it, he just wanted to be in a band and to listen to music. I found him again here in Sector Seven. He was still like a big kid, with his hair spiked up in the trend of the week and dyed red. He had a new girlfriend, Marietta. She was a nice girl, understanding about the ties Johnny and I had, she didn't have a jealous bone in her body. I did though, and found the constant reminder of him and what my childhood had been a little more than disturbing, so our contact simmered to a low point. He never wrote me another letter.

Of course in the early days of setting up my bar and the new custom it attracted, it also got the attention of Don Corneo, that underworld gangster boss from over in Wall Market. He tried to muscle in on the business, tried to get us to pay him 'protection' money.

Barrett soon saw that it was never mentioned again.

I think Koch still winces when thinking about Barrett's gun arm!

I didn't expect that five years later, I'd find Cloud, sitting on a bench in the train yard. I didn't think he'd forget a lifetime so easily.

With him came trouble, and with trouble came you.

I can't describe the pain I felt as we sped away on that shining wire of hope and despair, looking back past my hair as the support crumbled and crushed everything beneath it. Down there, somewhere underneath the metal, lie the decomposing bodies of those I loved like family. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. How can I ever tell you what this betrayal by ShinRa meant and how hot the burning of vengeance was in my mouth?

How can I ever let you know that even years later, I cannot let this anger go?

And when you left, when your eyes saw nothing and your smile was warm but empty and lifeless; how can you ever understand that my heart died too?

You'd given me back so much, all the feelings I had thrown aside, all the love I had let rot, all the desires I had let die; all of these dreams and more, you scooped them up and planted them in the barren flowerbed that was my heart and let them grow, tended with your love and care.

And you were dead.

It should have been me.

I don't know how miracles come about, but you came back to me...

The wolf stopped moving on the ridge and turned its head so the grey fur ruffled up in the wind that blew through the bones of Midgar. She too paused and looked calmly at that wolf, which seemed to be warning her against moving too far forward.

Tifa pulled her weight onto her back foot as she leaned out a little, peering down the chasm of a broken road that slammed into the dark areas of what had been a sector plate. The road signs were all still fixed firmly to the road, pointing down into the oblivion below. She swallowed and moved back a couple of steps, nodding to both herself and to her wolf guardian, who had begun to skirt closer to her.

"I see, thanks Zack," she murmured. It was ridiculous, she had no proof that the wolf was Zack but... staring into those odd blue eyes, she had to believe it. "That was a close one."

Not wanting to waste time, as she knew her friends would be close behind her, she dug a hand into her pocket and pulled out the mini GPS, taking stock of her location and using the touchpad screen to get a better bearing. It seemed she wasn't so far from the Old ShinRa building, which was only a few miles out from the Deepground entrances. She squinted against the afternoon sun, peering out over the skyline.

"There, do you see it?"

Zack, the wolf, whatever it was; it turned its head and stared in the direction she'd pointed in. Set into the distance was the ugly ride of the proud upper offices of the ShinRa corporate buildings. The windows had been totally shattered and the utmost three levels melted to almost nothing. The wolf curled it's lips back into a snarl.

"I know," Tifa soothed, "I understand. But it's our landmark now." She glanced down at the gps again, trying to widen the search area for the handheld map.

"You know, Yuffie was always much better with this kind of technology than any of us, maybe it's a generation thing? I always seem to get lost. Before Aerith came back, when the Deepground was in operation, Yuffie helped Vincent with the WRO, she was in charge of a lot of the field tech." Tifa lowered her handheld and looked at 'Zack'. He was staring at her, now sitting on his haunches. "I often wondered why she stayed with him, but I guess it's more obvious when you're in love yourself, right?"

The wolf lowered his head in agreement, tongue lolling out to one side, as if amused.

Tifa couldn't help but smile back at such a wolfish grin, "Vincent never saw it of course. Men are completely dense about such things, unless you batter them with a shovel to try and get your point driven home. Anyway, Shelke was one of the Deepground soldiers, able to dive through technology by using her brain as some kind of computer interface. She had a lot of Lucretia's memories, but... she wasn't the woman Vincent had loved. He set Shelke up as being able to live her own life, just as her sister Shalua would have wanted. Vincent left the WRO and set up a branch arm of the organisation, and Yuffie went with him. She loved him, despite all his flaws, despite the monster he was deep inside."

Tifa sighed, "He never noticed. Is this how you want it to end, Yuffie? Is Jenova's legacy enough to take everything you've worked for slowly over time, away from you?" She looked at her GPS, and put it back into her pocket, "...is love worth forgetting?"

The wolf shook its head, shaggy mane swaying and then it came to all paws and nuzzled against her knee. Without thinking she reached down and touched the brow and muzzle, no fear dwelling inside her. It was to her as if the wolf were saying, 'Love exists, love endures' and 'do not give up, giving up is the worst thing you can do.'

"I never forgot her," Tifa murmured, tears touching her eyes as the wolf stopped its ministrations and stared up at her with those beautiful and unblinking eyes. She gave it her lopsided smile, a little waver because she was fighting the sudden need to weep, to fall to her knees and bury her face among those strands of fur and rub all her worries and fears away in its coat. She clenched her fingers a little around the fur covering an ear, and laughed, a sad little chuckling ghost of humour; "I promised myself I wouldn't. Come on, we're almost there, we're almost at the end game. Will you come with me, at least for a little longer...? I'm not as brave as I once was."

Those eyes seemed to say, 'You are braver than anyone I know,' But when Tifa set off towards the new route, clambering out over spars and fallen rocks, abseiling her way with trepidation down the sides of broken buildings, the wolf stayed by her side like a grey ghost.

"What... what just happened..." said the lost little voice, the young Wutai was sat by the edge of the lake, staring helplessly out into it as Cloud remained unmoving, half in the water and sat on his heels. His eyes were dead and gazing into the grains of fine crystalline sand, borne from the grinding of shells and crystals over decades and centuries.

The others crowded about the small fire they had made by the shore of the lake, no one had been willing to move and not a single one of them wished to separate from the others. It was as if their presence all in one place could ward off the darkness that Sephiroth had brought to this place like a dangerous disease. She was wrapped in a blanket, huddled by their packs and her hands clenched white-knuckled on the staff that Aerith had loved dearly.

All of the Cetra's belongings had been packed into a small trunk to be shipped back to Midgar, to her mother. They had promised this much at least. The plan was to backtrack to the archaeologist site and send them via freight, over the seas to a world Aerith had struggled to escape from; a beautiful and lonely bird cocooned in ribs of steel. Even the glowing red orb, Titan, had been packed into those soft clothes and the folded up diary that Aerith had always kept with her, scribbling into each night about the fire and indignantly holding to her chest when anyone attempted to peek in.

Tifa felt numb.

She was as dead inside as the moment she had met Aerith – the embers of her love were ash in a heart that no longer beat to the clock, to the time measured out in kisses and laughter and friendship. She had been someone, finally! She was a someone to somebody worth having. In the end her tenuous grasp had slipped and the Cetra had fallen through her fingers. All her tears were spent now, her eyes raw and her skin cold. The air up in this forgotten city was so much chillier than even Nibelheim. Strange, given that on their arrival this city had felt warm, caught up in the grip of a mystical spring.

But Aerith is dead, Tifa thought sadly, and she has taken the sunshine with her.

Tifa relaxed and tightened her grip without thinking. So what if Aerith was gone? So what? Love would endure, and one day when it was all over they would meet again. One day, she would be there in the lifestream and she and Aerith could be together again and this pain would be nothing, a shade of a bad memory that is forgotten when held up to the light, seeing the small sparkles of something beautiful between the grey and black.

"We all need to start thinking about our next move," Vincent's gravel-velvet voice purred from the fire.

Her eyes closed; Vincent was right but she wanted to live in those memories just one more time. In those memories Aerith was alive and they were in love and the world seemed to be set afire by their love, burning and beautiful and ghastly all at once – A love that could change the hearts and minds of men forever. A love that had saved a broken soul from a depth better left to demons and devils, from the absolute silence of self loathing and hatred.

"Yes," she rasped her voice raw yet from screaming, "we do need to. But one more moment."

"One more moment can easily turn into two, to four, to eight..." Vincent seemed to shift; she could hear the sand rearranging itself underneath him. "It's time we discussed revenge."

Everyone looked around at Vincent on those words. Her own eyes suddenly fierce, she almost felt as though the fire of hell's fury itself could come pouring out of them, not towards him, but towards the man in black, towards Sephiroth. Revenge, what a sweet and delicious word to roll about on her tongue; it tasted just tart enough that it tingled on her lips when she murmured. "Revenge."

Yuffie nodded slowly, as if coming out of a dream, her young face determined and pinched pale, "He's right, this doesn't end here. I haven't come all this way; we haven't, for this to stop us."

"Aerith did her part," Cid added, "She prayed, she fought in the only way she could."

"Dying?"

Tifa cut her eyes to where Cloud was, his back to them and still half in the cold water of the lake. No lights bubbled up from underneath it; the entire city seemed to have extinguished itself along with Aerith. She was chilled by the way Cloud held his self in the water; his head was angled so it looked like he was staring down into the depths, willing the angel to come floating back out of it. He kept talking, a dry rustle of meaningless words; "She's gone, and we let it happen. She's gone, and all I did was stand there. She wanted tomorrow, she wanted a future-"

"No," Tifa was shocked the word was ripped off her own lips, but once she started, she couldn't find the energy to stop herself or the tears, "That's not true!"

Cloud's head moved a fraction and everyone else fell fearfully silent. He said calmly, "You know she spoke of the future more than any of us."

"Yes, she did, but Aerith," Tifa grasped the staff as hard as she could to hold it against her body. The wood was smooth and empty, there was no presence to either comfort her or love her in the hard staff, there were only splinters and even they pricked lightly, as if with sorrow and grief. "Aerith wanted us all to look at the future and want it! Even if it cost her everything, even if the price was the highest to be asked of anyone, she still paid it, she paid it for us... Our love," why couldn't she stop talking? "...it was taken from me before I could even ask... before I could... But I respect her for fighting, for her choices! I respect that she took this war in both hands and tried! What have we done but sit around screaming and crying! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, CLOUD?" The last was a scream almost torn from her very lungs.

No one dared breathe.

Cloud shook his head and whispered, "I did nothing. But you're right, we can still do something."

Yuffie nodded with eyes like saucers. Even the young girl could sense the intense air hanging all around them, and her voice, tiny and reed-like, cut in, "We can still fight."

"We can still fight," Tifa repeated. Her memories were still as fresh to her and painful as though they had occurred only the day previous. She paused by the broken door to the Deepground Laboratory. There were fresh smears of blood on the floor.

The wolf-Zack stepped ahead of her into the waiting darkness, toenails clicking on the concrete. Where was her courage? Tifa bit her lip and stepped in, and was swallowed up by the night inside.

Listen.

Yuffie wept into her hands, cuddled into the rocks by the broken computer equipment. The rocks down this far deep were infused with the eerie glow of the lifestream, they illuminated with a green light that made everything seem nightmarish and unreal. She felt like this madness was going to undo her.

One moment she was Yuffie, the simple ninja girl from a Wutai lineage that stretched back centuries, a proud girl and one day, the ruler of her clan. She was Yuffie, the vagabond who stole materia and climbed mountains and stayed close to the side of Vincent Valentine. She was Yuffie, the dark scion of Jenova's legacy and driven mad by the voices and the very radiation that dominated her every waking thought.

"Mom," she cried helplessly, "Mom!"

She wasn't sure which she meant, the twisted dark demon that visited her dreams and tormented her with voices when she was awake, that forced tears from her and drove her deep into the belly of Midgar on an unholy crusade for materia, power and destruction.

Or the kind and gentle woman she barely remembered from a childhood filled with danger because of ShinRa. The woman who had loved her father deeply and gave that stern and blocky face of his delightful angles of joy and passion and who had been the village medic and had lovingly tended Yuffie's knees when she had fallen over.

She felt as if neither memory could ever beat the other.

Shiny baubles of materia were gathered at her feet, but the one that caused so much pain and terrible joy was the one clutched in her hands. It was slick, and without light inside or out, as if it rejected even the faint glow of the rocks to the brightest sunshine. It felt alien and horrible, almost writhing inside her soul when her natural instincts for materia reached out to it. She wanted to shower, to scour her skin off; but at the same time, she wanted to clutch it to her chest and never let it out of her sight, she wanted to be part of it.

"Mom," Yuffie snuffled, the tears had suddenly ceased and a calm darkness flowed through her.

Mother is here, mother loves you.

"It hurts."

Without pain there can be no resolution – there must be an ending.

"I don't know how to use it."

Mother will teach you, mother knows everything. Come, my daughter, my little one, let me show you how.

The actual way to use the materia was terribly complex, and Yuffie's head swam. Had it always been this way, for those less gifted with materia? This was a high level magic, one she wasn't even sure she would be capable of.

Listen.

Her brow furrowed, and then she stilled, straining her senses.

There, footfalls. They were familiar to her, and another set, a kind of four legged animal: Red? No. Red would never leave his precious canyon, or their stock of 'Cetra' materials. Her lip curled in a sneer, derisive and dismissive. "I'll kill whoever it is."

It is not them you should be worrying about. Your brother comes.

"Impossible, she should have killed him," Yuffie felt panic, then a strange calm and a sly smile crawled over her face, "But, maybe we can turn them on each other. I need time, I need time!"

Yes, my beautiful and clever child; time you will have, and then we shall sing the Song for the end we desire!

Yuffie nodded as deep inside of her something screamed out, beat against this madness that was chewing at her brain and dissolving her heart. Her hands caressed the materia, and for a moment she could see her face – instead of soot streaked, bloodied and wild eyed with delirium and cruelty, this face was pale, pain filled and fragile. But the image faded.

"Save me," she whispered, as she moved from the rocks and deeper still into the caverns, "...save me..."