Chapter 9

Aerith didn't awaken right away. The fearsome image of Sephiroth's blade swinging towards her was the last thing she saw before it all went black, but somehow she slumbered through peaceful dreams. All of the fear that she had carried with her faded away, leaving in its wake a single moment of tranquility. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw Tifa staring back at her.

"Hey, Aerith," Tifa said with a warm smile. She was cradling her friend's head in her lap, idly brushing some stray strands of hair to the side.

"Are you really back?" Aerith asked, not sitting up just yet. "Or am I dreaming?"

"Maybe a little of both?"

"We're not, you know, are we?" Aerith took a quick glance around to get her bearings. A sudden tingling of nostalgia tugged at her as she traced the buildings and hills dotting twilit sky. Then she spotted the castle in the distance and knew for certain: they were in Radiant Garden. The way it was back then. Before the Heartless, before the witch, before Sephiroth.

"No. At least, you're not."

"Are you saying that you're…?"

"Not exactly. It's…complicated. I don't really understand it myself sometimes."

"Tell me what you can." Aerith reached up and took her friend's hand in hers. "You don't have to do this alone anymore," she said, slowly rising from her comfortable spot in Tifa's lap.

"It's been so long. It's all silly when you think about it." Tifa let out a self-spiting laugh. "I thought I was enough to reach through to him, you know? But then Sephiroth…he said there were two. It was me and…" she trailed off, caught between denial and acceptance.

Aerith suddenly leaned over and wrapped her arms around the conflicted fighter. "It's okay. I understand, really."

Though taken aback at first, Tifa slowly embraced her friend. "I've been so unfair to you," she sniffled as tears started to flow. "If only I had just told you everything from the start, none of this would've happened. But I wanted to be the one to save him. I wanted him to really look at me, you know? To look and see that I was always there—waiting, watching, protecting."

"Oh, Tifa," Aerith gently soothed, "he already knew. He was crazy about you. He still is. Why do you think he keeps wandering around, making shady deals with people like Hades?"

"Guilt. For that day."

Aerith shook her head. "You know that's not true. Cloud never found it easy to share his feelings or thoughts. He's scared of that vulnerability. But the way he was always stealing glances at you, how he'd follow you everywhere, how he always tried to be a tough guy in front of you—doesn't that tell you how much he wanted your attention as much as you wanted his?"

"You're right. I know that now. It took coming to this place for me to really understand just how foolish I've been. But it's so hard to think on it. Sometimes I don't want it to be true, because it just makes me feel worse for not trusting you more."

"Now that you mention it, what is this place anyway?" Aerith pulled away, and while Tifa wiped her eyes, she took another look around. It was definite Radiant Garden, but a specific part of it. The sat at the base of the water tower just outside the residential area—a place that she rarely visited herself but knew it as a private haunt for Tifa and Cloud.

"This is going to sound strange, but…we're inside Cloud's heart."

"It's not as strange as you think. I've heard of something similar happening."

"Really?" Tifa was surprised, but also hopeful. "I don't suppose you know how to get out of here?"

"Well," Aerith thought for a moment, trying to parse her words carefully. She remembered Sora's ordeal in freeing the Princesses of Heart, and that ended in him losing his heart. "First, tell me what it's been like for you. Do you see what Cloud sees? Know what he knows?"

"Kind of? There are a bunch of doors around. Each one leads to a different place. I call them 'thought chambers'." She got to her feet and gave Aerith a hand. "Come on, it's easier to show you."

Together, they walked down the street towards a collection of houses. Stopping in front of one, Aerith recognized the unlatched gate leading into a cozy, little garden—one she helped plant and decorate with Cloud's mother. They had installed a quaint, padded bench shaded by a decorative umbrella and surrounded by a vibrant rainbow of flowers. Aerith would always come here to sit with Cloud whenever he was too shy to leave home.

Tifa went up the pathway to the front door and opened it. "Take a look," she said, holding it for Aerith to peer inside. Instead of opening into entry hall, the door instead housed a swirling vortex of light and darkness. Aerith looked from the portal to Tifa, who gestured for her to step inside. With a steady resolve, she braved the vortex.

At once, a cacophony of wild, pained whispers flooded into her head. Her body felt like it was falling into a bottomless void, and the voices grew louder the deeper she went. A shot of agony struck through her head, threatening to rip it apart until she hastily summoned a magic barrier. With the protective glyph in place, she regained clarity and stability, allowing her to navigate the maelstrom. Order purged the chaos, and in its place was a chain of memories. It ran at high speed through the air like a movie reel. Curious, Aerith reached out her hand and lightly grazed her fingers along one. In a burst of light, she teleported into the memory.

It was a cloudy day. Rain pelted the windows and thunder roared through the sky. Aerith heard sobbing and looked around. Inside the kitchen, she found young Cloud crying on the ground, kneeling beside his mother. He tried to shake her awake, but nothing would rouse her. There was a large gash on her head from where she struck it after falling. Aerith wanted to rush to their aid, but knew that she couldn't. She remembered that day well. Cloud's mother had a stroke. Eventually, the doctor would come, but it would be too late. She was already paralyzed. Aerith lamented that her powers hadn't developed enough to help back then. Maybe she could have done something more than just offer her shoulder for him to cry on. But the past would never change, and she knew the futility in wishing it so.

"It's all here," Tifa said, appearing next to Aerith. "Every moment of his life. You just need to know which door to open."

"Have you seen everything?"

"Just about. I've been here a long time. There isn't much else to do besides fight Sephiroth and traverse this place."

"How were you able to come out?"

"There's a special door that appears sometimes. It's the one Sephiroth uses. If I'm quick enough, I can use it too."

"Is that how I got here?"

Tifa nodded. "When a new one opened, I tried to beat Sephiroth to it. We fought. I would've won if he hadn't summoned a thought chamber and shoved me through. I was running around trying to find the way out when I heard your voice, so I followed it and there you were—about to get sliced to ribbons. So I quickly grabbed you and slammed the door behind us."

"He has that kind of power over Cloud's memories that he can just summon new entrances at will?"

"Yeah, and he's been trying to corrupt them. Change little details here and there to make Cloud angrier or sadder—anything to manipulate him into falling further into Darkness. But I've always been there to realign the pieces, so he hasn't made much headway there."

"Just who—or what—is he?"

"Do you remember that creep Professor Hojo? He created Sephiroth from some kind of Heartless experiment." Tifa paused, nervously tugging at her glove as she pondered how much information to give. "There's a thought chamber up in the castle. It has the memories where…where it all happened." She clenched her fist, and Aerith placed a soothing hand over it.

"Let's not dwell on that," Aerith said. "There has to be a way to stop him once and for all."

"I've tried so damn hard! But no matter how strong or agile I get, he's always so evasive."

"That one time I saw you fight him looked so effortless."

"They say practice makes perfect. I've fought him so many times over the years just trying to keep Cloud together, you know?" Tifa let out an exasperated grunt, pulling her fist away to punch it into her palm. "Why isn't it enough?"

"Well," Aerith thought for a moment, trying once more to craft a careful response. The words felt so heavy and she debated whether to share them. So she decided to be blunt and get straight to the point. "You said it yourself: you should never have done this alone. I'm the other one, right? The second of the two people keeping Cloud whole."

After a long pause, Tifa took a deep breath and exhaled. Her eyes downcast, she nodded. "I'm sorry, Aerith. You're my best friend, but here I am still feeling…" She didn't want to finish that thought. She couldn't.

"Jealous?"

Tifa blushed, gritting her teeth. "Sad, isn't it?"

Aerith shook her head. "It's…it's caused so much heartache for everyone, hasn't it? My relationship with Cloud." Sadness pricked at her heart like a hot needle. The tragedy of betrayal wore many layers. She sometimes struggled in her compassion to forgive bad faith. But she couldn't deny the torment emanating from Tifa. Like a worm, anguish wriggled and burrowed its way through her heart. If nothing else, Aerith believed in her duties as a healer, elevating that responsibility higher than her own ego. She had to help her friend, first by forgiving her.

"I never—no…well…maybe." Tifa was tongue-tied. She didn't want to admit it. The mere thought alone caused her grief, but to hear herself begin to voice it hit her with a pain unlike anything else. Her body started trembling. With anger, remorse, regret, shame—everything.

Aerith hugged her again. "Tifa, I've always seen us as sisters. In your heart, you have to know I'm on your side."

"I know… I've had it all wrong. For so long." Unable to hold back anymore, Tifa started to sob again. She shuddered erratically, as if her soul wanted to leap out of its mortal, pained coil. Anything to escape the shame. "I'm so sorry. I've been terrible to you. I don't deserve to be called your sister. I've pushed you away so many times for such stupid reasons. And when you needed me the most, I wasn't there."

"That's not true! You just saved me."

"Not that. I mean the…" There was a very long pause. Tifa tried to settle herself, but couldn't, and she wasn't even sure if she should finish her thought. But it was already dangling halfway out, boxing her in a corner of guilt. She needed to say it. Not for Aerith, but for herself. She needed forgiveness, even if she knew that she didn't deserve it. Even if it hurt Aerith in the process. "The…witch."

Aerith slowly pulled away, a creeping melancholy eclipsing her mercy. A memory she kept bottled and locked away in the deepest, darkest reaches of her heart shuddered to life. She tried to push it back, but the spotlight already gave it a path to freedom. "You know about…?" Her voice was trembling. It grew hard to swallow, to breathe.

Still wiping fresh tears from her reddened eyes, Tifa nodded. "Cloud was there, remember? He…overheard what Merlin said to you. I am so sorry, Aerith!" She fell to her knees, bowing her head so deep it hit the ground. "It's all my fault. Everything! I should have been there! I should have protected you! I should have been the friend that you deserved!"

For a long time, Aerith said nothing. She stood still as her sister heaved heavy sobs at her feet. The bottle was trying to breach the surface now, wanting her to uncork it. To let it free and allow it to consume her with the deepest of sorrows. To darken her. To destroy her.

"Leon slurping lemonade."

"Huh?" Confused, Tifa slowly looked up at Aerith, who had her eyes closed and her hands clasped together.

"Leon playing frisbee with the duck brothers."

"What are you…?"

"Leon bundled in his favorite blanket by the fireplace."

"Aerith?"

"Hmm?" Aerith opened one of her eyes, a tiny smile crossing her lips.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, sorry! It's just something I do to calm down." She relaxed her hands and leaned down close to Tifa's face, looking her straight on with sagely eyes. "We can't change the past, you know? The only thing we can do is fight for a better future. So just let it all go, okay?" She widened her smile, filling her heart with as much happiness as she could muster in order to sink the bottle in a sea of light.

At first, Tifa didn't know what to say. She couldn't understand how Aerith stayed so positive despite all the cruel tragedies that life bitterly hurled at them. "Aren't you angry?" she eventually asked.

"Ever since the Heartless came, I've had to make a lot of hard decisions about what mattered most to me. Sure, I could get mad. I could start screaming at the top of my lungs like some banshee and go out on a wrathful vendetta. Doing that won't change anything, though. It'll just hurt the people that depend on me.'" She clasped her hands together and closed her eyes again. "I don't want us to fight. If I had one wish, it would be for all of us to come back together again. To rebuild and reclaim the happiness that we once knew."

"Aerith…" It took a while for all of it to sink in, and when it did Tifa couldn't help but smile. After wiping away the rest of her tears and regaining her composure, she stood tall again, ready to lead them out of the chamber. "So, you're right about Sephiroth," she said, diverting away from all the heartache. "He's really gunning for you. There are a lot of thought chambers around where…you're the principle memory. He targets those the most aggressively."

"Then the key to defeating him is for us to work together."

"But I just don't see how. I can't leave this place for long. I always get pulled back in."

"You really don't have any ideas why?"

"I think…" Tifa hesitated, not wanting to give voice to her darkest worry. But with Aerith there next to her, she felt a little more comfortable finally confronting it. "I think what Sephiroth did was supposed to be…the end, but Cloud saved me."

"That would make sense," Aerith replied, still clasping her hands.

"How?"

"I heard about something similar. Do you know who Sora is?"

Tifa thought for a moment. That name did sound familiar. "He's that kid with the big key, right?"

"That's him!"

"He really gave Cloud a workout from what I remember. What about him?"

"He was able to hide the heart of the girl he kinda likes inside of his own heart before the Darkness could get her."

"So you think that Cloud…?" Tifa blushed a little. It all seemed so romantic. "But what happened to the girl?"

"Reunited with her body. She's frolicking around all fun and fancy free now, like nothing ever happened."

"So then, the reason why this isn't working is because I'm nowhere near my body when I escape?"

Aerith nodded. "Stands to reason, don't you think?" She followed Tifa without realizing their destination. They had walked far away from the residential district and past the fountain square until they reached a little playground tucked away under the castle's shadow. A moogle-shaped slide rested in the center of a large sandbox flanked by two swing sets and a jungle gym. Decades passed since the last time Aerith visited the grounds. Not for lack of desire. Everything had been destroyed during one of the castle quakes and none of the adults showed interest in rebuilding it.

"I'm surprised this is still here," Aerith mused as she peered around the side of the big, pudgy moogle.

"There's a thought chamber inside the crawlspace," Tifa said, nodding to the tiny hole at the base of the slide. No adult could hope to squeeze in there.

"What's in it?"

"It's Sephiroth's most common origin point. It's the only door I've never been able to open."

Aerith kneeled down, putting her head near to the ground in order to peer into the crawlspace. Inside, she could see a wide space with a small, wooden door propped in the center. "What if we knock the frame away?"

"I've already tried that. It's tougher than steel. It can't be moved or damaged."

"Well then how does such a tall man with a large wing sprouting out his back manage it?"

"Puff of smoke."

"Cheater."

Tifa let out a dry laugh. "Yup."

"So why'd you bring me here?" Aerith asked, standing up and dusting herself off. "Are we doing a stakeout?"

"Something like that. I got to thinking earlier: if Sephiroth is threatened by both of us and he's always coming out of this door that I can't access…"

"…then what if the door needs me too?"

"Exactly."

"It's worth a try, at the very least."

The two sisters probed around the rotund slide base, eyes peeled for any sign of anomaly or disturbance to resonate with their combined presence. The first pass did nothing as they walked in different directions and poked around at different places. But when they reunited and passed the crawlspace a second time, something flickered. A rainbow light bean shot out from the hole, forcing it wider. It stretched up and out, running the entire length of the moogle.

"It worked!" Aerith chirped with a happy, little jump.

Tifa was stupefied. "Yeah…" She couldn't believe the ease of entrance. It was more proof that pushing away Aerith made everything worse.

Aerith approached the new entrance and peered inside. Bathed in that rainbow light, everything seemed roomier and even cozier. The once tiny door had also incurred a growth spurt. In its center, it sported a large keyhole and Aerith wondered if that would pose a problem without Sora around to help. Her thoughts started carrying her away when suddenly Tifa grabbed her hand.

"I want to do this right," Tifa said.

Aerith smiled. "Lead the way!"

Taking point, Tifa traveled through the new entrance with Aerith closely behind holding her hand. When they reached the door, she paused for a moment, growing nervous from worrying about what horrors awaited on the other side. But just knowing that Aerith was next to her helped those fears melt away. With firm grip, Tifa grabbed the obsidian doorknob and yanked the portal open. A swirling vortex pure darkness greeted them on the other end.

"Are you ready?" Tifa asked, steeling herself.

"As I'll ever be," Aerith replied, filling her mind with endearing memories of Leon as a distraction from the dread building in her gut. The time when he chased that dodgy sales moogle through the sewers somehow seemed appropriate. It ended with the moogle cornered in a dead end, choosing to devour Leon's munny pouch rather than return it. Clever as he was, Leon picked up some dirt from the ground and blew it into the moogle's giant schnoz, causing him to violently sneeze. The gooey pouch erupted through the air and smacked Leon upside the head, knocking him into the sewage stream. Aerith had summoned one of Merlin's magical bathtubs to help scrub him. In that rare moment, Leon let down his guard long enough for them to have a conversation.

"Don't ever trust them," he grumbled, rinsing the sludge from his hair.

Aerith poured a magic bucket over his head. "Who? The moogles?"

"The ones offering you an easy way out. Nothing in life is easy."

"Except maybe falling into drainage?"

"Whatever." Turning his back to her, Leon dried himself with a towel and then started to leave. But he suddenly stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Aerith, who was willing away the magical kit. "I mean it. If it's too good to be true, keep your wits about you." Without waiting for a response, he walked away.

"Okay," Tifa said, psyching herself up. "Let's do this!" She was about to step into the portal when Aerith suddenly tugged at her hand and yanked her back.

"Wait!" she cautioned.

"What is it?"

Aerith didn't say anything at first. Her attention fixed itself along the curvy walls where rainbow beams bounced off. Even though they were in an enclosed area, light filled the room. Except inside the portal. The other vortex had a mixture of light and darkness, but this one only emanated with the latter. The light stayed outside, almost as if it couldn't penetrate. Could they traverse the Darkness unscathed without a Keyblade? Something was telling Aerith not to risk it.

"We need to find a way to redirect all this light into the door," she finally said.

Tifa glanced around. "You really think it's that important?"

"Yeah, I do. Now think: what really is a rainbow? It's partitioned light. It's not whole in this room, and there's a lot of darkness between us and the thought chamber. So we need to find a way to reunite the light and channel it into a bridge."

Tifa hummed in agreement. "Any ideas what to do? Should we look for a mirror or something?"

"We need to find the source first." Aerith walked around, examining everything until she found the strongest point of concentration flashing out from the keyhole on the back of the ajar door. Curious, she raised her hand to it. The shadow of her fingers immediately appeared on all the walls. "Sora once told me that on the other side of every keyholed door is a heart, and hearts are filled with both light and darkness."

"So then…is this the door to Cloud's heart?"

"I think so. Probably to the deepest reaches of it."

Tifa came up next to Aerith and peered into the rainbow lit keyhole. As she examined it, her forehead scrunched with worry. "Looks like the prism is probably inside."

"So we'll just need to create a reversal out here."

"But how?"

Aerith held out an open palm and focused her energy. Tiny snowflakes fluttered up from a small wind that gradually intensified until a shard of ice sprouted up like a flower. Wrapping her fingers around the icicle, she held it up for Tifa to examine. It was completely transparent, with faint warped twists in the ice that distorted the image on the other side.

"A new prism?" Tifa asked.

"Yeah. You take this and I'll make something for myself." Aerith handed it over and then carefully formed another ice creation. Unlike the first, it was rounded off into a concave disc, almost like a frozen shield. "We'll need to reflect the unified beam from the keyhole to the portal at just the right angle."

Getting the gist of it, Tifa held her prism up to the rainbow. At first, it passed through like normal, but as she rotated the icicle, the colors slowly disappeared until she hit that sweet spot that turned the entire beam solid white. Aerith followed the light's path where it hit against the back wall and held up her shield. The light bounced from her to the other side, but it was still too far from the portal. It took a few tries between repositioning the door panel, their icicles, and the beam, but after several minutes of trial and error, their teamwork succeeded. The white light ricocheted into the darkness, exploding as the two collided and blinding the two sisters, bathing them in a warm, tingling glow.

When the brightness petered out and they could open their eyes, the portal standing before them no longer emanating with a foreboding, dangerous aura. The dark coils had subsided, replace with an aurora that welcomed them.

"Okay, take two!" Aerith said determined and eager. She grabbed Tifa's hand.

"I can't believe that worked," Tifa mused in awe. She and Aerith stood side-by-side, holding hands and peering into the infinite expanse of Cloud's inner chambers. After a moment's pause to silently pray for the best, they both took their first steps past the threshold.