Zack ran along the dusty road flanked by heaps and heaps of junk that connected the Sector 5 slums with the old church, where Aerith spent most of her free time. She had texted him just minutes before that she was not home, but at the church, tending to the flowers. Zack had no idea what sort of care the flowers needed beyond watering, but he was more than happy to keep her company while she was doing so. His eyes took a moment to adjust when he stepped through the heavy door into the dimly lit church, where the only source of light was the partially collapsed roof high above them. Aerith knelt in the bed of yellow and white lilies, apparently not doing anything special.
She looked up as she heard the old door falling back into the frame and waved at Zack. Then she froze for a moment as her eyes fell on me. I scratched my head and looked away as Zack stepped up to her, lifted her up and spun her around. "I made it back!", he announced happily, not noticing that she was looking somewhere else entirely. Her gaze went back to Zack, smiling, and gently kissed his lips, which made him look as if he had been struck by lightning. Watching them like this made me remember better times. We were like this once. Blushing teenagers. But quite unlike Zack's, our youth was wasted on a pointless war and simply trying to stay sane. And then we grew up. They finally let go of each other and Aerith led Zack by the hand toward the flower bed.
What Zack could not see was the faint green glow that engulfed the ground, where the floorboards had broken. It was my first time here, but this was a sight I had beheld before. This rare phenomenon occurred wherever the fabric separating the real world from the lifestream was thin, and mako energy, the life force of the planet itself, was able to flow out freely. These were the places where mako reactors were usually constructed. To find a mako spring in Midgar, and so close to Mako Reactor Nr. 5, whose base the church was right next to, came to me as a complete surprise. It was probably the reason flowers were still growing here, despite the proximity to the reactor. I looked around and realized that, perhaps this mako spring was even the reason the church had been constructed in this particular location. Though who or what had been worshipped here once eluded me. This spring was weak compared to the ones I had seen in life, but perhaps the living could only see the strongest of mako springs with their eyes. Except Aerith perhaps. She could see me, too, after all, and I was dead.
I looked at the two again, who were sitting in the middle of a flower bed, talking to each other full of excitement as Zack retold the events of the past few days. "So there's something really bad is going on right now?", Aerith asked. Zack waved a hand. "I wouldn't necessarily call it bad. I have no idea what's going on really. But the Turks are looking for Lazard." Aerith nodded. "That explains why no one is here today." Zack frowned. "What do you mean?" Aerith smiled, hugging her knees. "Unless they suddenly got better at hiding, I think no one is here today." Raising his eyebrows, Zack nodded slowly. She was talking about the Turks watching her all the time. "Do you feel safe without them watching over you?", Zack asked doubtfully. He had gotten used to feeling comfortable in knowing that she always had Turks protecting her, so nothing could ever happen to her, although he knew perfectly well that normal people did not have bodyguards and Aerith wanted nothing more than to be normal, whatever that meant. "I feel sooo much better with no one watching me." She crept closer to Zack all of a sudden and leaned on him, her hands resting on his thighs. They kissed again, longer this time. Zack did not know someone else was there, but Aerith very well did. But perhaps it did not matter to her because I was dead. I wondered if dead people were walking among us all the time. Had my mother been watching when I saw Sephiroth that last time before I left for good? That night on the roof when he was struggling to hold back his tears, me in his arms, a disfigured pair of white wings sticking out of my shoulder. Could Aerith see all dead people? Would the city not be really crowded if that was the case? It was strange one way or another. Why was I still here?
I do not know how much time really passed as they were doing whatever it was they were doing in the flower bed. I had turned away, giving them the privacy they were entitled to and tried to find something, anything, interesting in the ruined walls. Having forgotten the concept of time, I was lost in thought for a while, when Zack walked right through me toward the door. I, startled by the sudden change, got ready to follow him, since I had no choice where to be, but then I saw Aerith walking up to me. I hesitated for a moment as she stopped just inches away from me, looking up at me inquisitively through her large green eyes from her symmetric, heart-shaped face framed by wavy auburn hair. She reached out her hand toward mine, but it slid right through. Having no idea what else she expected to happen, I looked over my shoulder, but Zack was gone, and I was still in the church. "Pleased to meet you?", I tried to introduce myself, but she shook her head and said: "Sorry, I can't understand." She turned around and beckoned me to follow. "Come over here."
She sat back down in the flower bed and I slowly followed her. I had no idea what she wanted me to do, but I sat down next to her and watched what she was doing, although I could not make sense of it. I used to tend the fields back in Banora, and praying over our crops was not usually part of that. She looked at me briefly, as if to convince herself I was still there. Then she just started talking: "You know, it's really common for people who… pass on, to return to the people close to them, even if just for a brief moment. Some stay longer. That's why I was not surprised to see you the day right after." The day after what? Was that the time Zack visited her in her house and they shared a tender moment in her bed? She had known I was there, but she was apparently unconcerned by it. "I never met you before, but I recognized you right away. Zack told me so much about you. It really destroyed him when…" She shook her head. "Sorry, wrong topic." I looked away. Although it did not bother me that she reminded me that I was dead, I could not help but feel bad for what I put him through. "I'm sorry I made him do it", I murmured, although I knew that she could not understand me. She looked up briefly, and continued: "You've been here for close to a week at this point, right?" I thought for a moment, and then nodded quietly, realizing that she was right. It had been a week. "I've never seen anyone stay for that long", she continued. I had no idea what to say and just watched her, and listened, but to me it looked as if she was not doing anything aside from sitting in the flower bed with folded hands.
"How does it feel?", she wondered, but again, I had nothing to say. She could not hear me anyway, but I also could not describe what being dead 'felt' like. In the beginning I had been barely aware that I was still here. I was just watching what was going on around me. I believe it happened when Zack walked into Sephiroth's apartment and the tip of my – his sword hit the metal doorframe with a loud clang. That happened to me quite a lot back in those days, and nostalgia had drawn me back into reality. And it was not just me. Sephiroth, too, must have believed he had awoken from a nightmare when heard it. That was not so, unfortunately. But I had a feeling that he, too, could see me for just a brief moment, right after he fell out of the mako tank in Hojo's lab. No doubt he would put that down to mako-induced hallucinations, if he remembered it at all. I hoped for his sake that he did not.
"Do you think that there is something you have to do before you can return to the planet?" If there was such a thing, I was failing at it spectacularly, but this time I tried to give her an answer: "I want Sephiroth to be happy." Perhaps that was the reason I was still here. Despite everything, I used to think of us as quite happy, the two of us, with Genesis. Until my body started changing and I turned into what I became. I left him and then I left for good. Left him alone. I thought he would be fine by himself because he was always very distant, even toward me. Aerith looked up and smiled brightly. "Everyone wants their loved ones to be happy, right?" But I could not give it to him. The happiness I wanted for him.
She suddenly looked sad. "I wonder who it is." I suddenly realized that it was probably the feeling of wanting one's loved ones to be happy that she had understood, but not what I had actually said. Perhaps that was better than nothing, but I had no idea how to communicate with her on that level. Zack had not told her about us. He had not told anyone. After a brief moment of thinking, she continued to talk: "Aren't you wondering why I can see you? I'll tell you, but you have to keep that a secret." She giggled. "Even if you ever meet someone like me, you are not allowed to tell them about me." I thought that was highly unlikely, but I nodded. "By the way, next time we meet, I'll pretend that you're not there. It's nothing personal, but I don't want Shinra to find out that I can talk to people like you." I nodded again. Although I had no idea why she was being watched, I could imagine, after all I had found out about how I had been made, that she did not want Shinra to know what she was able to do. She hugged her knees and looked up at the hole in the collapsed roof from where the faint light under the plate shone in. "I'm a Cetra. We, Cetra, have special powers. They say we can talk to the planet, and open the planet, although I have no idea what that means. And that we are supposed to travel over the whole wide world in search for the Promised Land." I actually knew the legend she was speaking of very well. Genesis used to read so many books. Loveless was his favorite, but he had read "The study of planet life" as well. Although that book was not available in the public Shinra library and it was practically banned and only available through shady dealers, he had managed to obtain it from somewhere. And he used to try and connect Loveless to whatever he was reading at any time. Sometimes more, sometimes less successfully. But that was how I came to know about these legends. I had no idea at the time that anything in that book was true, but me, dead as I was, more or less talking to this girl sitting beside a mako spring, was in no position to doubt anything of that nature anymore.
"So you don't know what it means to open the planet?" It was a strange expression. Traveling to find the some Promised Land made sense. Talking to the planet did, too, in a way, perhaps in the same way as she was talking to me right now. She looked at me in bewilderment, but shook her head again. "Sorry, I don't understand." It did not matter that much to me at all, but I felt it was a stroke of good fortune that today of all days, none of the Turks were present and she could be free to be that special girl she was always meant to be.