Chapter 56: Not Enough Answers
Tifa glanced over at her friend. She recognizing the name and from Aerith's face she was just as surprised and puzzled as Tifa was. The brunette shook her head.
"No. That was my mother. I'm Aerith."
"Aerith…" the thin man repeated in a whisper and his face changed and for a second Tifa thought he was going to cry. He blinked behind his glasses and looked at Aerith like a little boy. "Where's your mother… Aerith?"
Tifa shifted over and rested her shoulder against Aerith's. Her best friend's hand came down to find and link with hers.
"My mother died when I was little." Aerith never spoke about those times, not even to Tifa. Just that her mother had died and Elmyra had taken her in. "Shinra killed her."
Tifa had never known that part and she tightened her fingers around Aerith's. The thin man's face seemed to grow older as she watched and he hung his head. His voice was very soft as he whispered:
"I thought so." He straightened slowly and looked at the two men blocking his escape. "It's all right. You can take me now. Whatever you've got planned, I deserve it."
Cloud stepped forward then and shook his head.
"Just questions."
The thin man narrowed his eyes at the blond warrior and straightened up to his full height.
"Don't think I don't know who you are, Cloud Strife. I heard what you did to Hojo. Did they ever find all the pieces of him?"
Cloud's blue eyes were blank and unreflective and they blinked once, very slowly.
"Just questions," he repeated and his voice was very soft and surprisingly gentle. The other man sagged and gestured.
"Do you mind if I make myself some tea?" his voice sounded weak and torn between laughter and probably screaming. Tifa had felt that way before sometimes. She started to open her mouth but Aerith spoke first.
"I'll make it," she volunteered and again, the thin man looked as if he were about to cry. Aerith made 'shoo'ing motions toward the armchairs in the corner. "Go sit down."
The man obeyed her meekly and seemed to shrink into his chair. Tifa, with a glance at Cloud, went over and sat down in the one closest to the professor. He looked at her and smiled a little weakly behind his glasses.
"You're a friend of my – of that young lady?"
"She's my best friend," Tifa supplied. Then she gestured in her 'bartender you know you want to tell me your problems' mode. "And these are our friends too. They've been keeping us safe."
He nodded and seemed to gather himself a little, sitting up a bit straighter. Thoughtful, he pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose.
"You mentioned Jenova?"
Tifa nodded.
"Yes. We were attacked by something – " her hand made a gesture that was incomplete. "Something – wrong. Cloud said it was Jenova birth. And it made him think that Sephiroth wasn't dead after all. But he remembers killing him."
Gast nodded, listening to the information and rubbed at his mustache.
"How much do you know?" he asked her as the familiar sounds of Aerith puttering around in the 'kitchen' came and Tifa shook her head.
"Not much and Aerith knows even less."
At the mention of the other girl's name, the professor turned his head briefly to spot her and then relaxed a little in his chair. He shot a quick glance at Cloud and then looked at Tifa.
"Long ago, before the history of the world, the planet was inhabited by a race called the Cetra. Some people also call them Ancients. They were an itinerant race that roamed the planet. They could communicate directly with the planet and manipulate it for healing and growth."
Tifa had the distinct impression she was back in school. Aerith came over with the cup of tea and handed it to the professor who gave her a grateful look that lingered on her face as Aerith took a nearby seat and sat forward in her 'interested' mode.
"Over time the race divided into two – the Cetra and – us. We are the descendants of the Cetra that had given up traveling and laboring for the planet in favor of comfort and leisure. We lost the ability to speak with the planet and our life spans dwindled. The Cetra passed into legend and disappeared. The research I was doing originally was to discover if there were any Cetra – Ancients – left alive on the planet. I was working for Shinra at the time and they had dreams of finding a 'Promised Land' only the Certa were supposed to have the ability to reach. It was fascinating research but it all seemed dead research until, one day, a Shinra survey crew fotud something amazing encased in pure solidified mako in the Northern Crater."
"A Cetra?" Tifa guessed because that seemed to be her line. His eyes shone behind his glasses at her.
"That was what we thought. The remains of a Cetra. It was – exhilarating. We were ecstatic. And in our excitement, we didn't pay attention to the warning signs."
It sounded like the beginning of a bad horror movie and so Tifa couldn't help but sit forward in interest.
"What we thought for quite a long time was a Cetra turned out to be something else entirely. An alien, a planet devourer, the 'calamity from the skies'. Long ago, this creature destroyed the already fading Cetra and threatened to destroy the entire world. Its name was Jenova."
Tifa suddenly decided that she might not like the way this horror story was going after all but it was a little late to turn back now. She was getting used to the idea of Shinra eventually killing the planet and needing to be stopped. But Jenova's ability to do the same thing sounded much more immediate.
"How do you know its name?" Aerith surprised them all by asking and for a moment, the professor looked at her and it was as if an old horror was rolling across him.
"It told us." He took a sip of his tea with a hand that wasn't entirely steady. "But by then it was already too late. We'd tried to recreate the Cetra, you see. Using the creature and gene manipulation."
Tifa shifted uncomfortably.
"What do you mean by 'gene manipulation'?" she asked and Gast's shoulders sagged inward.
"I left the project because of it. A pregnant woman was injected with the creature's cells. They had an amazing ability to revive despite their dormancy of millennia and to graft themselves to other living tissue. What resulted was an amalgamation of the two."
"You – injected a baby?" Tifa didn't sound as enthused but she did sound as horrified as Gast had and he nodded, head sagging.
"We did. The sin is mine. I was so interested in knowledge that I stopped paying attention. The woman was willing – but after she was injected – the changes began. And the creature finally began to speak to us. Inside our heads."
Tifa couldn't stop herself. She covered her mouth with her hands.
"I couldn't – I couldn't be a part of it anymore." Gast looked down at his tea. Hands shaking badly. "They went on with their experiment and I quit. I never found out what happened to the woman or her child. I ran away. I hid." He looked up and over at Aerith suddenly and his face softened. "And I found a woman who made the nightmares go away. Her name was Ifalna."
Aerith sat forward – and then back in her chair.
"My mother."
Gast nodded and his face was very sad.
"I fell in love with her. And… then I realized how she could make the whispering dreams go away." He paused, hesitated. "She was a Cetra. The last of her kind."
Again, the world went still with its waiting breath and Aerith's hands rose very slowly to fold in front of her over her chest. Gast continued gently.
"She could hear the voices of the planet. Could feel the Lifestream itself. She could coax life back into even the most dead of surroundings. Could heal the human body. And she was – she was beautiful…"
After a very long pause, Aerith softly asked:
"What – what happened to her?" and she raised green eyes so full of life and grief that it broke Tifa's heart.
"I… lost her. Shinra came after me. We got separated. I thought – I thought they'd all followed me. But I couldn't find her afterward. I searched everywhere. Everywhere," the word held despair. "Finally I came back to Shinra, trading my freedom for a chance to see if they had her. But they didn't. I never found her. I… never…"
Aerith was sitting very still in her chair, as still as if she was glass and would break at any moment. Tifa silently got out of her own seat and slipped over to settle on the arm of her friend's chair, wrapping an arm around Aerith's pale shoulders. Aerith shook her head.
"She used to – when I was little – my mother used to tell me stories about my father. She said – she said he was the bravest man she'd ever known." Aerith raised her eyes to the man across from them. "She said – he used to lose his glasses because he'd push them up on his head and forget that he'd done it."
Gast smiled weakly, eyes brimming.
"I don't do that anymore. My eyes need them all the time now."
"All right," Zack's voice cut through the emotion and he headed for the closed door. "You've got a bedroom in here, professor? Like where you keep your clothes and stuff?" He jerked the door open and strode in.
"Zack?" Tifa half stood up from where she was.
"Where's your travel bag, Professor?" Zack's voice came from the bedroom and so did the sound of drawers being opened.
"What are you doing?" Aerith was on her feet suddenly, preparing to be defensive and Zack's voice amid the sounds of ruin came back.
"He's coming with us, right? And we don't have a lot of time before Shinra and the Turks get here, right? So – Professor, where's your travel bag or do I just dump all this in a sheet and knot it together?"
Gast stood up, dropping his tea, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to either burst into laughter or tears.
"I can't," he managed and Zack came striding out of the bedroom with a gathered sheet full of stuff tossed over one broad shoulder. Cloud started to head for the professor, who looked panicked and darted behind his chair.
"No. You don't understand. I really can't." His voice was still refined despite the desperation. "Shinra implanted an explosive in me." That stopped everyone and he exhaled as he added: "It triggers if I move more than a mile away from my cave. You see," his smile was bitter as he pushed his glasses up onto his nose. "I refused to help them after what we'd done. But I was too important to let wander around either. I'm in 'storage'. In case I should ever become useful again."
"But this is terrible," Aerith protested. "Can't we do something?"
The thin man smiled suddenly and it was warm and real. He looked at Aerith.
"Yes. Yes, you can. You can go while you still have time and you can live a wonderful life and – and maybe sometimes you can remember me."
Tifa made an annoyed sound in her throat and reached into her pocket.
"Or we can just give you a PHS and you can call Aerith whenever it's safe to talk." She handed over her cell phone and the man took it in surprise. Tifa chuckled.
"You brainy types are so busy with your complex solutions sometimes." She looked over at Cloud and saw laughter in the edges of his blue eyes. She couldn't help but reach out and lay a hand on his arm since he'd moved closer when he'd started for Gast.
"How long do we have?" she asked softly as he looked over at her. His head lifted to look back out the ruined door.
"Not long."
"Monosyllables," she teased him, a private joke no one else in the room got and for a minute, as his eyes flicked down to hers, they were the only two there. Then he raised his head and she felt his hand slip around to rest against her back.
"Is there another way out of here?" he asked Gast voice suddenly slipping into that 'calm, tight' tone that meant trouble and the man nodded.
"The tunnel," he pointed to the way Cloud had been blocking before. "But keep going down when it starts to go up." He smiled a bit bitterly. "It's not as if I have to let them know all my secrets."
"What do we need to know most about Jenova?" Tifa asked quickly and Gast shook his head. Frowned and focused.
"Her body regenerates. The creature calls it 'reunion'. The parts of itself will always try to find their way back to the original. Even the parts of itself that are implanted in other living creatures."
"Time to go!" Zack announced from where he was standing near the tunnel and even Tifa could hear the noise from the entrance now. Aerith threw her arms around her lost and found and now lost again father. Tifa caught her arm and pulled her away and then they were dropping down into the tunnel in the earth floor, into the darkness of it, Cloud first and Zack last. And just before the trap door over the tunnel shut, she heard the dark haired ex-SOLDIER state:
"Sorry I trashed your room, Professor."
Tifa coughed her laugh and reached out with her hand blindly in front of her. Cloud's hand closed over hers and it made her smile in the dark. His fingers tightened in a brief squeeze and then she felt Aerith's hand searching against her back and she reached back to thread her fingers through her friend's as well. Cloud started off into the darkness and Tifa followed blindly. Still trusting but she hadn't missed -
Gast had looked at Cloud when he'd mentioned Jenova's implanted cells.
