So, we're back again, my gentle readers and best beloveds. If I'm going to torture you, the least I can do is be consistent with my updates. And, good news or bad, it looks like our story will end on chapter 112. Yep, I've been good and written ahead to the end now. I promised I'd finish this and you had faith in me that I would… so I did. Though I'll probably add and mess with the story straight up until I post the last chapter ;) Meanwhile, back at camp… lexi-yeesh – cripes! I love your reviews! I can all but hear your voice in them and it's like sitting at a movie next to someone that doesn't mind you grabbing their shoulder or hand during scary parts. Do you yell advice at the characters on the screen the way I do? 'Cause they never listen to me. I'm so, so glad you're on this ride and thank you for the comments on Aerith, Tifa, Cloud – the whole gang. Now I just have to try to explain all the evil I did in the next couple of chapters, right? Fairheartstrife – guh?! I must have done something good. Or very, very bad. But I'm okay with 'guh'. Here – take three and call me in the morning ;) OCV – I seriously laughed my head off at the beginning of your chapter 95 review. The 'this isn't so bad… wait? WHAT!! What?what? Noooooooo'. Well, I paraphrased but yeah, that made my day and possibly my week. I couldn't have asked or begged or paid for a better response. It was absolutely priceless. My author feelings have now been fulfilled. That was just grand. And mom calling says you can borrow some of her lactose pills so stock up on the chocolate cause I'm not done yet! Cherrypudding – wow. Just… wow. When you catch up with all that back reading, I'm giving you a wow. Cause that's a LOT of back reading to do. I certainly hope I live up to your expectations. I do my best to not disappoint people that read my stuff. Mc – whee! I know I do good when I get a review like that from you. Yeah, nobody in the story knows what's going on either. And, to tell you the truth, while I was writing, I didn't know exactly what was going on either ;) dang characters never tell me everything. I finished chapter 95 and then sat there going, 'well, crap. Now I'm going to have to write more just so I can find out if Aerith is dead or not'. Let me bury you in Cloud plushies for warmth and security and give you my next three chapters. Ladywisdom – so many killable characters… so little time left… I will tell you though, Aerith wrote what happened/happens to her herself and it was not at all what I had planned. I think it works though. And yeah, poor Zack, he doesn't even know if he's Zack. How could I kill the guy without giving him an answer first? Akuma – you are SO in charge of the music from now on! And I'm pleased beyond that the story is living up to expectations. More ahead! sian – I'm trying! I'm trying! :D I just have to finish polishing up the story I've written to give to my agent ;) And thank you for the compliment. Despite the fact it's written in a fantasy world I am trying to keep it lifelike. If I'm doing a decent job of that, I'm happy. Iskra – seriously, I would miss your reviews terrible if you ever go away. What a stupid grin you've put on my face. Take Cloud plushies! Take many Cloud plushies. I will even give a variety (KH1 and 2 – with and without wing), CC Cloudy – comes with extra big blue eyes, AC and ACC Cloud – with and without dirt), FFVII Cloud with built in sarcasm, DoC Cloud complete with laugh upgrade. Yes, take many Clouds for your reviews and my hugs of thanks too. Demonegg – dang! Loophole! I like that 'mixed up – mysterious – heart rending - and deep'. My head gets so big I can barely fit through the door with words like that. Poor Cloud though – them cookies is going to be a while in coming. Vanillia raindrops – you're right. Tifa is definitely in need of a group hug at the moment. And then possibly some snuggle time. And then on to some private snuggle time with Cloud. However, the next three chapters will have to do temporarily. I'll see what I can do about that group hug though. Vx-luna-xv - … somehow I don't trust you… lol But I'll come back, at least long enough to offer the next three chapters so the wild lions won't tear me apart. Hopeful it will answer your question too. Kind of… ladywisdom – wow. That's another… wow. Reread the whole thing? I'm – wow, I'm flattered beyond expression. Thanks. I must have done something right if it's getting second reads. Now you've made me feel all warm and fuzzy. And, I'm glad. I really am. I try to fill my chapters with details both that matter at the time but that hopefully make more sense as more of the story reveals itself. Little gems I try to hide in between the expected sentences. It makes me grin that you've found them and enjoyed them. Tae – oh, Tae. What a wonderful review. I had to let Cloud protect Tifa (and Aerith). I missed it in AC and was so glad they at least gave him a little bit of an opportunity for it in ACC. I too would like to know what was going on inside of Cloud. Only Tifa talks to me when I write with occasional comments from the peanut gallery and sometimes I'd love to just rewrite the whole thing from Cloud's POV just to see what was going on inside him. Some answers to questions in the upcoming, provided by… of all people, Zack. Though not all the answers. Not yet. ;) Soon though. I promise lots of answers and soon.
Chapter 96: Down and Out
She screamed. She never screamed and when she heard the raw horrible sound that came out of her, Tifa knew why. It was lost and hopeless. She hadn't known she could make that sound…
Her body lost its balance when she tried to get to her feet the first time and so, feeling like a drunk, she carefully picked her way back to her feet and across the ruined room to where Aerith's body and Cloud's separated sword lay. Both used and discarded. She went to her knees next to her friend and reached out to try to feel a heart beat before she realized that her hands felt too numb to feel anything that delicate. Her vision was blurring and liquid was dropping off of her chin to land on her folded legs. Vaguely, she realized she was crying – and didn't care.
"Aerith, come on, Sweetie," she half lifted her friend, hands shaking as she brushed the wet hair back from her pale face. "You've got to wake up now. You know you have to."
She felt fractured and, at the moment, dealing with Aerith was the only thing she could bear.
"Aeris… please…" her voice started to break and she shook her head fiercely. She wouldn't acknowledge this… she wouldn't!
"Tifa!" The yell was panicked and she turned her head in instinctive response, not able to see much through the blur across her eyes. She did recognize Zack when he skid to a stop next to her though and went half crouched, still on alert for attacks.
"They're gone," she told him and it felt as if her voice was very far away. "They took Aerith's rock and they're gone."
Zack cursed and then leaned down to check Aerith's pulse.
"Where's Cloud?"
Tifa lifted her face and looked blankly at him. Yuffie came running over, dust covered and bloodied, to join them. For a minute, there were not only no words in Tifa's head; there were no thoughts.
"He's – gone too," she finally managed, words tumbling out like rocks, feeling odd and heavy against her lips and tongue.
He gave her a look but didn't ask. Yuffie did however.
"Wadda you mean 'gone'? Like 'gone' 'gone' or like 'gone' like we need to find him 'gone'?"
Tifa swallowed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her wrist. Damn it, all the tears were making it too hard to see!
"Gone 'we need to go back to the Highwind with Aerith' gone," she managed, feeling suddenly old. Eyes desperate she looked up at Zack. Whatever he saw he dropped his sword and went down on his knees next to her to pull her into his arms. She felt him rubbing her back in tiny little circles the way she did for her siblings when they were sick with a fever. It felt nice and she shut her eyes and locked her jaw so she wouldn't start crying, really crying.
"Hey," Zack's voice was steady. "She's okay. Aerith has a pulse. And I think – " he paused and Tifa could tell he was deciding on how much to say. "I think I know what's going on. Kinda." He pulled away to meet her eyes. "I think. But we need to get Aerith back to the Highwind first, okay?"
"Cloud's not here, is he?" she couldn't stop herself from asking. Couldn't stop herself from worrying that they would accidentally leave him behind in this building that wasn't a building. Couldn't help hoping – oh Gaia, please… that she was wrong about him being gone. Zack's eyes were steady but he shook his head.
"He's not here, Teef."
There was another sound in her throat but she choked on it and refused to let it out. Zack scooped Aerith up in his arms and, if she was breathing, Tifa couldn't see any signs of it. While she knew Zack would blithely lie to her if he thought it was for her own good, she couldn't imagine him lying about that. Feeling worse than she had when she'd woken up for the first time, really woken up for the first time, in Cosmo Canyon, Tifa struggled to get to her feet. She was surprised for some reason when she felt Yuffie's hands on her arms helping her up. Then the smaller woman leaned down and scooped up the pieces of Cloud's sword.
"He'd never leave the Fusion Swords…" Tifa heard her whisper quietly to herself. "Not all of them like this…"
It did occur to Tifa to wonder how they were going to get back out, considering Aerith wasn't there to walk through walls for them but Zack went back to the hole in the floor and, carefully guarding Aerith, lowering himself back down. Tifa and Yuffie followed.
The room they found themselves in looked like a cave more than a room and as Tifa followed Zack further in she saw it became more and more cave-like as they went. In fact, the 'building' part faded more and more until it felt as if they were simply walking through an underground system of naturally formed tunnels and caverns. Tifa looked around as they went, noting that, the deeper in they went, the more the walls looked like the trees outside in the forest, white and crystalline and glowing. Her boots made splashes in small puddles of water that had collected and the wet, sharp sound seemed small and echoed hollowly.
"How did you find us?" Tifa finally thought to ask as she picked her way over the uneven floor behind Zack, glad to have something to need to concentrate on. Yuffie came just behind her, determinedly carrying Cloud's now reassembled sword over her shoulder even though it was taller than she was. Tifa had thought about offering but the other girl seemed set and Tifa wasn't sure she could handle holding Cloud's sword without needing to sit down and cry.
"Why we followed the invisible thread from great-great-grandmother's ring and it led us into the mountain past the goblins," Zack piped from the front of the line even though his usually cheerful voice wasn't quite managing to seem careless. She shook her head at the familiar fairy tale.
"We followed the goblins," Yuffie clarified. "Or the silver haired freaks at least. We caught them cutting across the lake on the same stones you must have taken across. Then we all got swallowed up but we found Cloud and then the freaks found us and then we got into a fight and then we found you and then everything blew up."
Tifa paused to slide a glance at the girl back over her shoulder and then kept moving.
"Okay…" she managed after a minute. "I think I got some of that."
Yuffie snorted.
"What about Sephiroth?" Tifa asked again after another minute of walking through the twilight caves. Ahead of her Zack cleared his throat, something he had a habit of doing when he was going to say something uncomfortable. Tifa waited and was surprised when Yuffie didn't ping in.
"I don't there is a Sephiroth," Zack began slowly and Tifa touched her chest with her fingertips and made a noise. Zack shook his head in front of her, a slow brush of his black mane against his shoulders.
"I know, Teef. I saw him at the reactor too. He almost killed me, for Gaia's sake. And I saw him here. But I don't – don't you think it's weird how he just always shows up wherever it's best for him to be?"
Tifa thought about it and had to admit she really hadn't thought that. Zack kept going thankfully.
"I mean, how does he always know where to pop up AND manage to be there?"
"'Cause he's pure evil and that's a Standard Bad Guy Trick?" Yuffie offered and Tifa found herself agreeing silently. Zack made a noise in front of them that might have been a chuckle but sounded suspiciously like Cloud's more subdued amusement.
"Look at it this way – I was fighting Sephiroth just now back in the weird green room, right? And he was kicking my butt. I mean seriously. Not as bad as last time but I was still barely holding my own." Zack had never been ashamed to admit when he wasn't up to something and he didn't seem to hesitate to do so now. "But like, halfway through the fight all of the sudden he jerks back and goes weird with this black fog around him and the next thing I know I'm fighting some silver haired kid that looks like he shouldn't even be drinking legally. And let me tell you, the fighting skills went way downhill too as soon as he changed. You saw it, Yuffie. Isn't that what happened?"
"Yeah," Yuffie's voice sounded surprised. "I was behind him but he wasn't all 'I'm an ad campaign for silky hair conditioner' anymore all of the sudden. I thought he looked kinda cute in fact but then those two bozos blew us up with their materia and I lost sight of him."
"Yeah…" Zack sounded as if he was pausing and debating which parts of Yuffie's commentary to respond to. Finally, he went with: "So I don't think I was fighting the real Sephiroth. Or, maybe I was fighting him but then he… went away? Like possession or something weird like that. It made me wonder if maybe he just… manifests? through those silver haired guys and whichever one is where he wants to be is the one he uses." He exhaled. "It sounds crazy but – "
"He had his eyes," Tifa interrupted, feeling as if she were verbally lancing a boil. "Cloud had Sephiroth's eyes. At the end. Here. All jade and snaky."
It was silent for a long moment and it was a huge silence that was hollow and unwelcome.
"Tifa," Zack's voice was very soft. As if he expected her to burst into tears again but suddenly she didn't feel like doing that at all. Suddenly – she was furious. "What exactly happened?"
So Tifa told them. She told them everything. About the disease on Cloud's arm and back and what Aerith had said about it. She told them about the jade eyes he'd had in the forest. She told them about what she and Aerith had found in the Lifestream fountain in the room and where the rock was now. And she told them about what Cloud had said and done when he'd been with her just before the silver haired strangers had disappeared with him. She told them because it was just them and somehow it was all right to tell the two people that loved Cloud as much as she did what had happened to him.
She didn't know that she'd be able to do the same onboard the Highwind for everyone else.
At the end of her explanation, it was quiet again but it was a thoughtful, rumbling quiet. Finally, slowly, Zack said:
"I read something. In Hojo's notebooks. It didn't make a lot of sense. It still doesn't. But – it was something about creating conduits. Living conduits. I thought he meant for the Lifestream, that he was writing about trying to create living creatures. But… what if he was trying to make conduits for Sephiroth?"
"But what's that got to do with Cloud?" Yuffie asked and Tifa turned her head to look at the younger girl struggling along as she carried her older brother's sword.
"Cloud might be one of Hojo's creations," she told the other girl gently. To her surprise, Yuffie snorted.
"Yeah, right. And I'm the Dancing Queen of Goblin Island. Pull the other one, it's got bells."
Despite herself, Tifa had to fight a smile.
"I'm serious, Yuffie." Since they were giving away all of Cloud's secrets, what was one more? Tifa had already seen the way Yuffie looked at Cloud. He could grow a third eye and she wouldn't care. Tease? Sure. Care? Not in the least. "Cloud was exposed to concentrated mako for years. By Hojo. He's not sure which memories are really his and which belong to other dead souls. He's not sure if he's the boy that saved you or if he's just… a creation that remembers that boy's memories."
Yuffie's brows came down over her dark eyes and she frowned. Zack made a sound and Tifa looked ahead to see they'd reached a natural opening of sorts in the wall and outside was the slate gray fog that she remembered.
"Knew the damn thing couldn't go on forever," Zack stated triumphantly and made Tifa wonder if he'd actually been guessing when he'd been leading them so steadily and confidently ahead. She had to stifle the urge to ask him because if he answered wrong she'd be forced to kill him. Behind her, Yuffie was starting to sputter:
"Why that - ? Is that why he - ? I hope his mother grows chin whiskers! All this time - ?"
"I don't think he wanted to risk losing you," she turned her head to tell the other girl. "And… I think he really did want to be your brother."
"That's not it at all!" Yuffie burst out. "I can't believe he went all this time and didn't just ask me! I was there, wasn't I? Of course he's Cloud, my Cloud, the soldier that defended me! I saw! He's got that huge ass scar on his chest and back 'cause that's where Sephiroth stabbed him when he got between me and the silver haired freak when I was a kid! I've seen him without his shirt on – he's got the scar! Of course he's the same guy! Duh… Like they make clones or monsters or whatever the hell with scars. Jerk. He's such a loser. I'm going to kill him when he comes back."
