Rot

I was in little contact with Geostigma at first. I was safely closeted away in Wutai; it was something happing on the mainland.

Then it came to our small island, and all Hell broke loose.

Everyone thought that Geostigma was just a thing that happened in Edge and the surrounding Old Midgar. But in reality, it swept through other places like the plague. The first time I knew it had reached my homeland had been when, out walking, I'd heard a little boy crying, "Mommy! My skin is melting!" I looked over at the child, saw the fetid green-ish tinge of the Geostigma, that dread disease that they had blown off, disregarded as unimportant.

Within a week, nearly fifty percent of the children ages four through eight had the Geostigma. My father was in a panic. Some teenagers had it as well, and since I had been exposed to both excessive quantities of mako and Jenova, I was at high risk. My father was more concerned with the thought that Wutai might be left without an heir than the thought of me, as his daughter, dying.

I was isolated "for my own good". Basically, that meant that Daddy Dearest locked me in my apartment with my fifteen cats and forbade me to leave.

When the call came from Tifa, I laughed out loud. Freedom seemed so close! I had been locked away for nearly two weeks, and I relished the thought of seeing my friends. And Vincent.

I packed a bag, stashing a change of clothes, my kunai and shuriken, and, of course, an almost mastered materia set. When the Shera came to pick me up, I was gone so fast my dad probably didn't even notice for a day. Then again, he doesn't care to begin with.

When I heard that Cloud and Denzel had the stigma, I was shocked. Geostigma was supposed to be the Planet punishing us for all the mako use, but those two had already been put through so much...

And then I saw you, and you were still fucking scary, and I thought, Well, if you're alright, that's okay then.

And you were tall and forbidding. And I couldn't stop feeling like you were going to make things better again. But the only fighting any of us did besides Cloud was when we, just you and me, tag-teamed one of the Remnants. That was serious-shit fun.

So, Cloud beat them. The Remnants, and therefore Sephiroth, were gone gone gone!

And the rain came, and that huge pond opened up in Aeris' church. He cured the children, and I cheered, and you stood there and looked...like you do when we all save the world. Kinda happy, but awkward, and those weird eyes of yours are always a little crinkled at the edge, like you're smiling under all the fabric.

And it was all okay. The rain fell all over, and all the children, even in Wutai, were cured.