the earth rises again from the sea, and is green and fair

by Kairos27

Summary:

Child, speak not overmuch, lest the Calamity hear and understand what we have understood: that her defeat shall come at the hands that bear no weapon but themselves.

 

After the fight with Loz in Aerith’s church, Tifa wakes up in the flower bed the morning after the Sector Five reactor bombing.

She doesn’t know that she’s traveled back in time, and neither does Aerith.

Notes:

I don’t even go here. Blame the Rebirth cutscene compilations in my YouTube algorithm for this.

Title from the Völuspá.

Chapter 1: Tifa I

Tifa floats in a world of white.

 

She notes, grimly, that it is similar to her vision in the belly of the Weapon at Gongaga. White, everywhere her eyes can see. Tifa remembers Cloud following Sephiroth into that same unending white, and Sephiroth’s voice mocking her.

 

Your words can’t reach him now.

 

Things were supposed to have changed now that Sephiroth was dead, but apparently they hadn’t. Cloud was going somewhere Tifa couldn’t reach, again; she was back at square one.

 

Cloud hadn’t even told her that he was sick. It’s only because she knows him—or thought she did—that she’d had the flash of intuition to go into the ruins of Midgar, to the church in Sector Five. She saw the stained bandages, the thin bedroll, a paltry collection of potions and antidotes lined up on one of the pews, and that was how she had to find out. Because Cloud couldn’t just fucking tell her.

 

Did he think that Tifa would have abandoned him? Told him that this was what he deserved? No, he had to know better. If only he had told her, she would have given up everything to take care of him, just as she had in Mideel. Instead, he took his sick self to Aerith’s church, dosed himself on antidotes and potions that Tifa knew wouldn’t help much (because they barely helped Denzel), and slept on the rotting floorboards in a threadbare blanket. Faced with his mortality, he was doing penance, even though Aerith was dead and beyond his reach. She should have known that at the end of the line, Cloud would choose Aerith.

 

Not that Tifa blames him for that, not really. Wherever Aerith is now, she is beyond suffering—the knowledge that might offer Cloud hope in his sinking. And Tifa knows what it was like to love Aerith, as hopelessly as she loved everything and everyone else that she’d lost. During the weeks they had spent together, Aerith had become as close to her as her own soul. Playful, beautiful, and sweet, occasionally sassy and melancholic, yet full of resolve and courage, Aerith deserved to be first choice, in every way. It should not hurt so much to remember that Tifa wasn’t. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt at all, if Aerith was still alive to remind her, and if it did, it wouldn’t hurt enough to matter. At least Aerith would be here with them. If only those thrice-damned Whispers hadn’t blocked Tifa from that altar—if she had just tried jumping in ahead of Cloud when Vincent was helping her hold the way open, maybe she’d have been able to do something. Their friends all acknowledged Tifa to be the fastest of the party, aside from Vincent—maybe she would’ve been fast enough to at least push Aerith out of the way, if not block Sephiroth’s blow.

 

But what of it? Even if one could even compare Sephiroth to Eligor, Tifa hadn’t been there when it mattered. At the Forgotten Capital, they had all just…assumed that Cloud had the best chance to get to Aerith. Hindsight proved them wrong; Cloud, for all of his enhanced strength and prowess, had not been mentally stable enough to defy Sephiroth’s manipulation. They had miscalculated, and Aerith had died for it.

 

The guilt was indelible—it would never go away, and Tifa was going to lose Cloud again.

 

It’s nobody’s fault. I made sure that it would happen. Don’t blame yourself.

 

The words, faint yet clear, come to Tifa from a distance, snagging at a sharp edge of memory: an eerily quiet forest drenched in a dense fog, and the last time she ever heard Aerith’s voice.

 

Aerith?

 

“Aerith!”

 

Suddenly, Tifa is no longer floating. Her feet make sudden contact with the ground, her body jarring from the impact. She hisses at the pain that shoots across her ribs, but it disappears quickly. Her eyes blink open to the sight of yellow lilies at her feet, the skin of her bare arms warm with the feeling of someone standing directly behind her.

 

Tifa whirls around with a gasp. Aerith’s eyes sparkle as she smiles at Tifa. Tears spill unbidden down Tifa’s cheeks as she lunges forward, grasping Aerith’s arms and pulling her into an embrace. She smells of just-bloomed flowers, laden with dew in the cool of the morning.

 

Oh, how much she’s missed her.

 

“Aerith,” she weeps. “Aerith, is it you?”

 

A warm, gentle hand pets the small of Tifa’s back. “Do you remember how you got here?”

 

“I…” Tifa paused to think. Right. She had been with Marlene at the church, where she had discovered the evidence of Cloud’s presence, and then an man with silver hair and unsettlingly familiar reptilian eyes had come in and provoked her into a fight. A fight that she ended up losing. She’d been too slow, out of practice and woefully unprepared, but she needed to protect Marlene from this person—and she failed, failed like she had failed the woman in front of her—

 

A melodious giggle. “Is this something that people from Nibelheim do? Blame themselves for everything bad that’s ever happened?” Aerith teases, but her hand doesn’t stop patting Tifa’s back soothingly. “Then again, you and Cloud are the only ones that I know. That’s not a large sample size.”

 

“Aerith. Is it really you? Where…where are we?”

 

“Well, I know for sure that you’re you. Nothing’s changed: every time you get mad at Cloud, you end up getting madder at yourself and then you start blaming yourself for what Cloud did or didn’t do. As for where we are…you already know. There’s only one place where I could be,” Aerith replies calmly.

 

She is still as cryptic as the last time Tifa saw her alive. Tifa leans back a little and swipes at her tears, in order to get a better look into Aerith’s eyes. The verdant sea green glow of the Lifestream shines through her irises. Sparks of light dance within them. “We’re in the Lifestream.” Tifa should not be as disturbed as she currently feels—after all, she’s fallen into the Lifestream twice and came out mostly unscathed. Not a lot of people can say the same.

 

Even so, the Lifestream, despite its name, is not a place for the living. Tifa swallows. “Am I dead?”

 

Aerith shakes her head, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a negative. Sometimes, Aerith would shake her head if she didn’t know the answer. “I need to tell you something. Well, lots of things.”

 

“What?” Tifa tightened her hold on Aerith, but not too much.

 

“This illness that’s been going around? Jenova’s been infecting the Lifestream. Sephiroth…well, that guy you fought in the church just now…”

 

“…is Sephiroth?”

 

“Not really. He’s a…remnant, I guess you could say.” The corners of Aerith’s mouth turn downward in light frustration.

 

It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that Jenova never really went away. At Cosmo Canyon, Gi Nattak had told them that the Lifestream refused to embrace any life form that didn’t originate from the Planet. But Sephiroth… “There’s been no sign of him for nearly two years after Meteor.”

 

“Sephiroth hated Cloud,” Aerith explains, “and it’s Jenova preventing that hatred from dissolving into the Lifestream, as all things must. He is naturally strong-willed, and his hate is his fuel…Jenova’s especially.” Aerith steps out of Tifa’s embrace. “Jenova leeches off the essence of every planet she’s been to, sucks them dry, but she especially thrives on hatred and envy and greed and all that. Normally those things eventually disintegrate in the flow of the Lifestream, but Sephiroth’s got Jenova in him, and as long as Cloud’s around, he’ll keep hating him and Jenova will make sure he never goes away.”

 

“But—but why?” Tifa shakes her head in disbelief. “Aerith, he’s…he doesn’t deserve this. Cloud…he’s already fought so hard.”

 

“I know,” Aerith says. “The endgame is to purge Jenova from the Lifestream, or have the Lifestream embrace her.” A brief scowl of frustration crosses Aerith’s face. “That last option is definitely not the will of the Planet. By maintaining the…purity of the Lifestream, the Planet believes that she’s protecting herself.”

 

Familiar specters appear above them—those damned Whispers again. As they begin to swirl in growing numbers around them, Tifa reaches for Aerith’s hand, and holds it tightly. “Aerith?”

 

“I’m running out of time. Listen, Tifa. The Lifestream absorbs the souls of the dead and returns them to the Planet so that the Planet can bring forth new life. However, a Cetra can choose to retain their consciousness in the Lifestream. If their will is strong enough, they can use the memories and dreams in the Lifestream to create new worlds—actually, more like separate timelines—and populate them with the souls from the Lifestream. Sephiroth thought he was a Cetra. He talked about the reunion of worlds—he believed that the Planet was his birthright. He wanted to rule over the Lifestream, and all the worlds in them, as the penultimate Cetra. I’ve had to learn all of this stuff quickly—because Sephiroth got a head start on me.” She squeezes Tifa’s hand. “But most of all, I don’t want you or Cloud or anyone else to blame yourselves for this. I had to die, so that I could summon the Lifestream from within it to help Holy intercept Meteor. The Planet led me there, but I needed it to happen. It was the only way to save you guys, and the Planet too. But now it’s time to deal with Jenova. So that she can’t hurt you guys anymore…and make it so she can’t do this to any other planet ever again.”

 

What Aerith is describing almost sounds like godhood—or at least godhood-adjacency. No wonder Sephiroth was so deluded. He thought he could do that kind of thing. Except where he had wanted to destroy, Aerith sought to save.

 

“If Jenova doesn’t integrate into the Lifestream because the Planet refuses to let it happen—does that mean Sephiroth never goes away, and Jenova basically continues tainting the Lifestream until the Planet dies? Then stopping Meteor was just a reprieve?”

 

“That would be pretty ironic.” Aerith lets out an inelegant snort, and for a moment she is no longer the nearly-divine last Cetra, but the Sector Five slum girl. “I’m doing my best, but the whole Cetra civilization couldn’t defeat Jenova when she first came among them,” Aerith continues. “It doesn’t help that the Planet clings to maintaining the purity of the Lifestream. Now Sephiroth and I…we’re trapped, in an cycle that has now become a stalemate. This stalemate is the Planet’s will…and as a Cetra I have to follow it. At this rate—I’m not even surprised that the Cetra died out the way they did, and I’m not just talking about Jenova infecting them.”

 

As if displeased with Aerith’s speech, the Whispers cluster around them, hissing, but for now they are keeping their distance. Aerith glares at them.

 

Tifa shakes her head. None of this is fair. Aerith had died so young, just to save them, but even in death she is still caught up in the perpetual struggle against Jenova and Sephiroth, and Cloud is also suffering for it. “Isn’t there a way that you can get out? Can’t the cycle be broken?” She still hasn’t let go of Aerith’s hand.

 

Aerith continues glaring balefully at the Whispers. “There’s always a way. The question is whether it’s worth it.” She swivels her gaze back to Tifa. Her gaze softens and grows sad.

 

With a shriek, one of the Whispers charges at them. Tifa releases Aerith and her fist swings out, smacking the specter off to the side—but the other Whispers, emboldened, dive towards them.

 

“No!” Tifa shouts, tugging Aerith closer as a group of Whispers descend on them. “Aerith!”

 

To her surprise, a duo of Whispers swoop in and block the larger group from attacking her and Aerith. Aerith grabs Tifa’s shoulder.

 

“Don’t forget, Tifa.” Aerith’s gaze has turned anxious, now. “Whatever happens, you need to remember this.”

 

“Remember what?”

 

She sees Aerith reaching to touch her face before a Whisper suddenly interposes, blocking Aerith from her sight.

 

“No! Wait!”

 

Aerith’s voice is little more than a distant echo as sudden barrage Whispers surround her and hurl her away into a deep darkness.

 

Don’t forget, Tifa.

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

 

//

 

 

Tifa wakes to the smell of crushed lilies and the glare of fully functional sunlamps shining down through the gaping hole in the roof above her.

 

Wait. Those lamps weren’t supposed to be working anymore. Hadn’t Midgar been destroyed?

 

No, it couldn’t be. She remembers locking up early at Seventh Heaven yesterday.

 

A sweet, cautious voice calls out to her. “Hello? Are you okay?”

 

Aches ripple through Tifa’s body as she sits up rather too abruptly. A cool sensation, like an ice pack to a bruise, relieves the faint throbbing of her limbs and head—indicative of a Cure spell being cast on her.

 

Warily, Tifa turns to identify the speaker. A slender young woman with light brown hair, shining green eyes, her lips curled in a concerned moue. Tifa’s mouth moves to form a name.

 

Aer—

 

Wait. Who?

 

Her brain stutters on a thought that this is—wrong. She almost called this woman by name,  but how can she? She doesn’t know this woman.

 

But somehow, she also knows this woman died tragically young, and the sudden grief she feels at the thought shocks her. Not only that, the grief feels old and worn despite its weight, as if she has spent years mourning for this unknown woman who is alive and well.

 

“Oh, you’re alive! Good!” the woman chirps, her cheerfulness in direct contrast to the inexplicable surge of sorrow that had overcome Tifa. Tears spring to her eyes, which she hastily wipes away in a vain hope that the woman won’t notice.

 

The woman does notice her tears. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Tifa says, more roughly than she intended. Ugh. She sounds like Cloud.

 

The young woman apparently chooses to ignore the brief rudeness. She natters on about how Tifa appears to be mostly unhurt, that she probably fell through the hole in the ceiling, and that the flowers must have cushioned her fall and therefore saved her from injury—Tifa politely does not mention feeling the Cure spell. “You’re very lucky, you know!”

 

Her voice is familiar. Friendly and warm, with a touch of playfulness that Tifa has missed desperately. But how can she miss it if she’s never heard it before? No…that’s wrong. Maybe Tifa has met this woman before. Midgar, both above and below the plate, is an enormous place, with a sea of people living in it. But if this woman’s voice evokes such sentiments as it does, surely Tifa would remember her name, right? Working as a bartender has made Tifa pretty good with remembering names and faces.

 

Oh. There’s something. This woman’s voice was the same voice that had told Tifa not to forget—yes, told her to remember something…but what was it? When did she say it?

 

Whatever happens, you need to remember this.

 

What?

 

Confused, Tifa looks down at the crumpled plants beneath her. Some of them look well and truly squashed, their stems snapped in half and flattened. She recognizes the flowers—it’s the same one Cloud had given to her after he returned from the Sector One reactor bombing. He hadn’t said where he’d gotten it. Flowers were practically nonexistent in Midgar; it was a rare gift, and one she treasured. Now here she was, trampling all over these precious flowers that were probably the only ones able to grow in all of Midgar. “I’m—I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t do too much damage.”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” the woman says breezily. “I’m sure they’re fine. And if not, they’ll grow back. Can you stand?”

 

“Yes…yes of course.” Tifa rises carefully and steps back onto the wooden floorboards. She notes that the flowers themselves are growing in a gaping hole in the floorboards. Looking around, she sees that she has fallen into a church—she only knows this because she’s seen pictures in history books. Given its state of disrepair, the building must have been abandoned for some time. That this building is still standing is a surprise, as deity worship had long gone out of fashion in Midgar.

 

Something unbidden in the corner of Tifa’s mind suggests to her that she might’ve been here before—but that’s impossible. She’s pretty sure that she’s never been here before in her life. Biggs never pointed out the church to her on the rare occasions when she accompanied him to Sector Five…

 

Sector Five—

 

The reactor!

 

Right. They’d bombed the reactor. Then there was Heidegger’s projection laughing at them and the Airbuster—

 

Explosions everywhere, the structure giving way beneath her feet—

 

Cloud and Barret shouting her name as she fell—

 

“Did you say reactor?” The woman sighs and stands up from where she was kneeling over the flowers. Somehow, Tifa just knows that this woman grows these flowers. “Yeah, everyone in my neighborhood heard the explosions going off last night. And this happening so soon after Sector One’s reactor, too. People are pretty scared.”

 

“Oh,” Tifa says in a very small voice. The bombing happened last night, so she’d been lying in the church for several hours. What happened to Cloud and Barret? Did they manage to get away?

 

Did they think that she was dead?

 

“Well, no lasting damage done,” the woman said lightly. “The flowers I mean. Don’t know if I can say the same about the reactor. Oh! Looks like you dropped this!” She straightens up and hands Tifa a glowing orb—the Summon materia Cloud had given her in the Corkscrew Tunnel. “In case of emergencies,” he had said, and it was cute to see him pretending like he wasn’t worried about her.

 

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Tifa snaps the materia back into her glove.

 

“It’s super nice, I can tell,” the woman says. “I’ve got one too, but it can’t really do anything. Maybe I just don’t know how to use it.” She peers at Tifa. “Hey, if you use materia like that often, you could probably teach me how.”

 

She reaches into the pink ribbon knotted in the back of her head and withdraws an orb, unlike any materia that Tifa has ever seen. It glows a faint, milky white, something like swirling clouds trapped in a clear orb. “It used to be completely white,” the woman says, “but over the past few months it’s been losing more of its color. I don’t know, it might turn completely clear someday.” She looks incredibly sad at the thought. “But even if it does, I’m gonna hang onto it for as long as I can. My mom gave it to me. It’s special.”

 

Tifa’s heart aches, despite herself. “That makes sense. Since it’s special to you, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

 

“Maybe.” The woman turns her back to Tifa briefly, replacing the orb in the knot of hair at the top of her braid.

 

Tifa blinks; for the split second her eyes are closed, she is in a forest—and she sees this woman’s back fading into a thick fog from which she will never return alive.

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

Of course, Tifa has long been privy to Barret’s harangues about the Planet dying due to Shinra, but there is a deeper, desperate urgency to the spectral voice speaking in her memory (of whom?).

 

Tifa breathes in slowly, trying to calm her suddenly racing heart. The woman’s hair catches the light of the sunlamps, glowing a rich, warm caramel. There’s no denying that this woman is beautiful. 

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

Dust motes, also caught in the light, twinkle like stars—like the gleam of souls fading into the Lifestream—all around her. Tifa looks down and clears her throat.

 

“Anyway, I’m not much of a magic user myself…I probably wouldn’t be able to help you figure it out. I’m sorry.”

 

“Hi sorry, I’m Aerith.”

 

The woman giggles. Flabbergasted, Tifa gapes at her.

 

Suddenly, the church doors swing open with a bang. A smirky fellow with shockingly red hair swaggers inside, accompanied by a squad of Shinra security officers.

 

Trouble.

Chapter 2: Aerith I

Aerith hums, picking her way along the rooftops of Sector Five. The buildings are so close together that, with the help of ladders, sheets of corrugated metal and wooden planks, the residents have created a walkway of sorts above the narrow, winding alleys. She’s never had the opportunity to actually take this “scenic” route before, although she’s heard the Leaf House kids speak of it often.

 

Her companion walks behind her, treading cautiously but with much more balance. Rather like a cat, Aerith thinks, and since she is obviously some kind of martial artist, of course she would have superior control over her body. Aerith finds it incredibly appealing.

 

It helps that her new acquaintance—Tifa—is also very nice and pretty. Beautiful, actually; Aerith might be the tiniest bit envious, because Tifa has such nicely defined musculature—particularly her abs and the swell of her biceps. And then, of course, quite well-endowed in the chest area. From a physical standpoint, the Lifestream made no mistakes in forming her. On top of that, nothing about Tifa as a person feels wrong, at least from Aerith’s interpretation of the Planet’s perspective. Quite the opposite, actually: Tifa feels safe. Like a haven.

 

Aerith is glad they met—even Reno’s unwelcome appearance can’t ruin her good mood. Truth be told, Aerith had not planned to go to the church that morning. But the Planet kept pestering her, replaying images of someone falling through the roof of the church to the point where she felt like she had to go.

 

After all, it was the same way that he had fallen into her life. Maybe a very deep part of herself had been hoping that it was him even though the chances were low.

 

It wasn’t him.

 

It was a young woman with long, dark hair and fighting gloves on her hands—no giant sword to be seen anywhere. When she woke, Aerith saw that her eyes were not blue, nor were they tinted with the harsh, eerie green glow of mako. They were the color of wine, and gentle.

 

Aerith had thought that she would be disappointed, but she hadn’t been disappointed at all—Tifa is adorable. She’d been extremely apologetic about the flowers. No, beyond that; Tifa is courteous, something that is foreign to the Midgar slums. She didn’t get prickly or annoyed when Aerith teased her—she’s clearly too well-mannered for that. Aerith wonders if Tifa has ever been to one of those swanky finishing schools topside, and then immediately dismisses the possibility. Tifa isn’t giving off the snobby vibes usually associated with those kinds of girls. Odds are that she isn’t even a Midgar native.

 

However, Tifa had hardly been gentle or courteous when handling Reno and his little entourage of Shinra troopers. After Aerith had made it clear that she had no interest in complying with Reno’s demand to come along with him, and one of those poor stupid security officers had made the mistake of threatening Aerith—Tifa had said loudly, “She’s not going with you. Now get out or I’ll make you.” She then turned to Aerith and said. “Run, I’ll hold them off for you.”

 

Aerith had nodded and ran to the back of the church, behind the altar, and up the rickety stairs to the second floor gallery. She stopped and unfolded her staff just in case—she wasn’t going to just abandon her new acquaintance to Reno. From her vantage point, she could see Reno being all snickers and smirks as he ordered the troopers to deal with Tifa.

 

Those smirks quickly went away when Tifa raised her fist, one of the materia orbs in her gloves glowing brightly. A rune circle appeared above their heads and Ifrit, the fire djinn, dropped into the fray with a roar. So much for her saying that she wasn’t much of a magic user!

 

Having squashed one of the security officers upon landing right on top of him, Ifrit had grabbed the other officers in his flaming fists, set them alight, and flung them into the walls. They bounced hard off the stone and fell in crumpled heaps to the floor, still very much on fire. Aerith had winced at the smell of burning flesh. Apparently their uniforms weren’t fireproof—Shinra cutting corners. Aerith would have been more worried about Ifrit causing more structural damage if she hadn’t known that Ifrit’s fire was pure magic—once he left, the flames would leave with him.

 

In the meantime, Tifa had gone for Reno, who seemed more annoyed than shocked to see his entourage neutralized in such a dramatic fashion.

 

Reno was fast, but so was Tifa, and from the smooth way she dodged his baton and closed the distance between them so he couldn’t get a hit in, Tifa seemed to know the measure of him, oddly enough. Like she had fought him several times before. Weird, because he didn’t seem to recognize Tifa—he’d even asked her who she was.

 

They exchanged several blows, some landing and some not. He dodged her incoming punch, she grabbed his baton arm—as he turned to bring his baton around and strike her, she dodged and spun under his arm, the momentum leading her into a whirling kick. Her foot rammed him in the back. Reno went stumbling forward, and just as he rolled to his feet and turned, Tifa hit him in the chest with another kick that sent him flying out the church’s open doorway.

 

Frankly, Aerith had found the entire display extremely attractive, but she didn’t have time to clap and cheer. “Come on!” she had yelled instead, “there’s a way out through the attic!” and Tifa had come running. Ifrit had already vanished, having dealt with the security officers.

 

As they clambered out onto the roof, Aerith had heard the echoes of Reno snapping at more people down below, but—most likely Tseng had a hand in this—he didn’t seem determined to give chase.

 

Now, having learned Tifa’s name—Aerith swears she would’ve asked sooner if Reno hadn’t so rudely interrupted them—they are busily crossing Sector Five’s rooftops to find the best way back to Sector Seven, where Tifa lives—and she seems in a big hurry to get back, which is regrettable. It would be nice to spend more time together with someone so fascinating.

 

The Planet knows. Tifa is, after all, one of Aerith’s biggest regrets.

 

Wait, what? They’ve never met before. How could…?

 

“Please be careful,” Tifa says anxiously as Aerith scales a very rusty ladder.

 

Aerith, wait! Please be careful!

 

It was so easy for her to lose Tifa and the others in the fog…

 

Aerith shakes her head clear of the confusing vision (memory?) and scoffs. “Oh, don’t worry. I can handle it. I’m not some coddled princess, you know.”

 

Right at that moment, the ladder decides to collapse beneath her. “Shit!” Aerith curses, barely managing to catch hold of the nearest ledge with one hand.

 

Tifa rushes over to help. Gloved hands grasp Aerith’s arm and pull her up onto the roof—not the hands of a swordsman that hardly knew his strength, but the hands of someone who fought with fists and yet still knew how to be gentle. Hands that had used to hold Aerith’s with strength tempered by patience, hands that Aerith knew and missed even now—

 

But how could that be? She definitely would have remembered Tifa if they’d met before today.

 

No. I know her. I prayed to the Planet for her.

 

Whatever the Planet is insinuating, it’s becoming frustrating—well, more frustrating than usual, today. She looks into Tifa’s concerned gaze.

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

Aerith freezes.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine.” Aerith looks over the rooftops and the enormous scrapyard piles at the still-smoking reactor. “Security is going to be a lot tighter now that the reactor got bombed. They were crawling all over Sector One after it was bombed,” Aerith muses. “When it happened, I was topside, selling flowers—it took forever to get home. I got home so late that night. My mom was really mad at me.”

 

“I see,” Tifa says in a low voice. She looks downcast.

 

This won’t do at all.

 

“I owe you for kicking Reno’s ass,” Aerith says. “Would you like to come back to my place? We can have breakfast. Besides, the streets are going to be packed with security officers looking for the bombers; I mean, they have to make it look like they’re doing something, to calm the populace. It won’t be easy getting crossing over to Seven right now, especially once we’re back on the ground.”

 

“N-not at all! You don’t owe me anything,”Tifa stammers. “And you live with your mom, right? The state I’m in—I’m hardly presentable. I can’t enter someone else’s home like this. It would be rude. You probably have things to do, I shouldn’t keep you from doing them. I’ll—I’ll figure out a way back.”

 

Her politeness is so cute. She’s just so…so proper! “Hey. These are the slums, you know! Nobody expects you to turn up in your best! Besides, you’re not that dirty, but if you’re worried about that, if you come over to my house, you’re free to use my shower,” Aerith wheedles. “I heard you say earlier that you’d kill for one.”

 

Interestingly, it’s the mention of a shower that finally gets Tifa to capitulate. “O…okay.”

 

Aerith grins. “Let’s get moving!”

 

//

 

She didn’t mean to fall. Really! It was just…unexpected, that when they finally got to a place where they could get back to ground level, there were no ladders or stairs or anything. They had to jump down, which Tifa did easily enough, but Aerith had balked. Nonetheless, the rickety ledge had made the decision for her, and down she tumbled.

 

“Aerith!”

 

Oh, yes, but Tifa really is that strong. She’d stumbled and almost fell when she caught Aerith, but at least Aerith hadn’t ended up eating dirt thanks to Tifa cushioning her ignominious descent.

 

(Aerith is very proud of herself for resisting the urge to reach out and pinch Tifa’s biceps at that moment, to see how they would swell beneath her fingers when Tifa flexed. Instead, she had chirped, “My hero!” which made Tifa giggle slightly.)

 

Despite the glut of structures in Sector Five, few people live in the area they’d had to pass through to get to Aerith’s. That was due to the monsters—and so this was where Aerith had determined to cement her claim to Tifa that she isn’t a coddled princess.

 

She thinks she’s done a good job of it, as Tifa declares herself “really impressed” with Aerith’s spells, especially when she casts the wards. “You’re a natural,” Tifa says, “and it’s great that your spells can smash the things from a distance. I have to get in close to attack.”

 

“Yeah, but I’m definitely not as fast as you,” Aerith mourns. A Venomantis had charged into the ward she was still casting, and she’d been too slow to get out of the way. Only Tifa’s timely intervention of smashing its head in with a fierce punch had allowed her to avoid the highly poisonous stinger at its tail. On the other hand, Tifa had not appeared to have any trouble dodging them. “That always bites me in the ass.”

 

“Well, I have your back, so don’t worry and focus on what you do best—soon you’ll be crushing these monsters before they can even get close!”

 

Aerith feels herself buzzing pleasantly with the encouragement. It’s been a long time since she gotten any compliments that weren’t about her looks, and she can’t remember getting any compliments from a woman that isn’t her mom.

 

Still, Aerith would prefer not to be beset by so many monsters before breakfast. At least when they go about kicking ass, they’re able to gather the items from their defeated enemies, like potions and money. Especially money. While Ifrit hadn’t pickpocketed the Shinra troopers from earlier, Tifa had managed to nick a Turbo Ether off of Reno. Tifa may have had some proper upbringing, but she’d clearly learned from living the slums.

 

“I always wondered how monsters got the items in the first place,” Tifa says. “People say that it’s the stuff they swallowed while eating their victims, but that seems unlikely given the size of some of these monsters.”

 

“Well…” Aerith pockets another twenty gil and brushes off her skirt. “Some say that there are times, when a living thing dies…it may refuse to return to the planet. Usually due to greed, hatred, or jealousy. If these feelings are strong enough, their essence clings to some object, and their bitterness grows until it takes the form of a monster.”

 

“Wow. I’ve…never heard of that theory before.”

 

Aerith shrugs. “It’s just a theory I read in a book I got from a guy in Sector Five. I helped him knock out this huge Hedgehog Pie and he gave me some old books about magic as payment. Not as useful as money but…good enough for some rainy day reading.” She claps her hands. “Almost there! Just have to stop by the Leaf House for a bit, in case they have something they need.”

 

“Oh, I know that place. I’ve been there a few times. A friend of mine in Sector Seven grew up there, he goes back every so often to help out,” Tifa says. “Maybe I can leave a message for him there. He’s…probably worried.”

 

“Of course,” Aerith says. “But you’re still coming to my house for breakfast—and for that shower I promised you. No take backs!”

Notes:

I love gremlin Aerith.

Chapter 3: Tifa II

Tifa has never been to Wall Market before. She’s heard the stories, and she’s stayed away as best she can.

 

However, when she and Aerith arrive, something about the gaudy, neon-lit alleys feels like déjà-vu. It doesn’t make any sense, to be somewhere she’s never been before and yet finding it familiar. She shouldn’t know that the ornate Wutai-style building dominating the (low) skyline of the district is Don Corneo’s lair, but she does, even without being told.

 

If for some reason AVALANCHE needed to do some reconnaissance in Wall Market, Jessie would go. Jessie’s previous career in show-business certainly gave her a leg up on Tifa, who, despite being hardened by the years in Midgar, kept the country girl she used to be close to her heart.

 

That said, the country girl she used to be would be very shocked to see Cloud Strife in a red-light district cabaret, and of course it’s city girl Aerith who has brought her here. Pretty, lively Aerith, the local florist apparently being harassed by Shinra, who lives with her mom in a charming red-roofed house surrounded by flowers and a small moat fed by a spring—an unexpected paradise in the dreary squalor of the undercity that Elmyra, Aerith’s mom, claims is mostly Aerith’s doing (the flourishing flowers and garden, that is). A beautiful mystery.

 

Yes, that Aerith, who continues to surprise Tifa at every turn.

 

//

 

When Tifa had finally gotten a message to Biggs through the Leaf House, what she’d heard back from him (via the phone at the Leaf House) was not encouraging. Don Corneo, the organized crime boss and king of Wall Market, had sent people looking for Tifa and Barret. Barret had scoffed and shrugged it off, but Cloud, according to Biggs, had decided to go to Wall Market and investigate.

 

 

(“He said anything that had to do with you was his responsibility now,” Biggs had reported. “He didn’t say it, but I think he was really torn up about losing you at the reactor. Anyhow, Barret’s going to be ecstatic to know you’re okay. As for Cloud…I’ll try to get in touch with him and let him know too, but Marle says he hasn’t been back to his apartment.”

 

When she had relayed this information to Aerith and announced her intention to find Cloud, Aerith had insisted that she would need help. “Don Corneo isn’t to be trifled with. You’ll need backup!”

 

“But Aerith, I don’t want to drag you into my problems—”

 

“What do you mean? You’re not dragging me into anything. We made a pretty good team earlier, didn’t we? We can beat down anything that stands in our way!”

 

Tifa had opened her mouth to argue, but instead she muttered, “Guess it’ll be impossible to talk you out of this.”

 

“See, you get me! Didn’t take you long at all to figure that out. We get along so well!” Aerith looked mischievous. “Besides, who even is this Cloud guy that you’re willing to risk Wall Market for him? Is he your boyfriend?”

 

“No!” Tifa had exclaimed.

 

“But he’s someone special?”

 

“We…we grew up together, that’s all. He…I think he gifted me one of your flowers, a few days ago.”

 

“Oh, a customer of mine? What does he look like?”

 

“Uh…spiky blond hair, blue eyes, about this tall, big sword—”

 

“What?” Aerith had shouted. “That’s your Cloud? The grumpy blond guy I ran into in Sector One? I gave him that flower for free! How dare he regift a flower from another girl?”

 

“Huh?” Had Aerith flirted with Cloud when they met?

 

“The flower I gave him means reunion. Like, when lovers meet after a long time.” Aerith’s sour expression changed to a sly grin. “I think Cloud was trying to tell you something.”

 

“Uh…well, I mean—”

 

Aerith had planted her hands on her hips. “But first! We need to prepare. And then once night falls, we’re going to Wall Market. Once we find your Cloud, I’m going to yell at his cheap ass for the flower thing. That’s not the way to treat a girl you like!”)

 

//

 

How all of that had led to Cloud dancing on stage, is anyone’s guess. Tifa isn’t sure that this is what Claudia had envisioned for her son.

 

That said, any lingering small-town bigotry Tifa might’ve had was all swept away by Midgar and the years she spent just trying to survive. When mere survival was on the line, people did what they had to do, and if they found a way to take the edge off of living and make it a little easier to deal with…well, she’s not going to judge them for it. She runs a dive bar in the slums, for crying out loud. That’s certainly not what her father had intended for her.

 

Now she finds herself in Wall Market, at the Honeybee Inn—seated in a booth with Aerith. Some of Aerith’s regular customers live and work in the area. (“Mom doesn’t like me doing business in Wall Market,” Aerith says, “but what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her!”). They’d told her that a man with spiky blond hair and a large sword had been seen walking into the Honeybee Inn. Once seated, Tifa had used some of the gil they’d scavenged that morning off of monsters to purchase some (fairly overpriced) drinks for their table—in order to blend in, that is, not because of Aerith’s cute pout when she’d asked. She’d barely avoided spilling lager on herself when she saw Cloud being hustled onto the stage.

 

Tifa presses her hand to her mouth, trying hard not to laugh too loudly at Cloud’s gloomy expression as he dances along with Andrea Rhodea, proprietor of the Honeybee Inn (“the most fabulous man in Midgar’s undercity,” Aerith informs her).

 

He seems to have resigned himself to his fate—but damn, his strutting, the way he snaps his hips, the slink of his shoulders—the boy was born to dance. Aerith (and the audience) clearly agree.

 

“Woohoo! Cloud, work it!” Aerith shouts, clapping enthusiastically. Her eyes are wide with delight as she turns to Tifa. “You said earlier that you and him grew up together. Did you know that he could dance like that?”

 

“No,” Tifa says. Back in Nibelheim, Cloud always refused to take part in the barn dances that the townsfolk organized at weddings, shearing time, and holidays. Most of the time, Tifa remembered that he occupied a corner near his mother and rarely spoke to anyone.

 

Suddenly, the music changes; an ornate chair is brought to the stage and Cloud is placed in it. Honeygirls and Honeyboys swarm him, armed with makeup.

 

Life can be harsh, it can be bitter;

 

“Is he getting a makeover? He’s getting a makeover!” Aerith babbles, clearly finding this to be high entertainment. Her arms are practically flailing in the air.

 

But we can make it oh so sweet,

 

“Are they…” Tifa leans forward. “Are they putting him in a dress?”

 

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” titters a Honeygirl, who has slid into the booth without Tifa noticing (she’d been too engrossed in Cloud’s dancing). The Honeygirl rubs Tifa’s arm, and squeezes her shoulder lightly. “Andi’s gonna turn him into a vision of beauty. See if he doesn’t!”

 

“Er, excuse me, your hand…”

 

Here at the Honeybee Inn, every moment

Is a treat.

 

Sparkling confetti bursts into the air as the Honeygirls and Honeyboys stand back to reveal Cloud in the poofiest, most sugary-looking dress that Tifa has ever seen.

 

Aerith gasps.

 

“Oh no, he’s hot!”

 

Tifa whips her head around to stare at Aerith. “Excuse me?”

 

But before she can further question Aerith, the music changes up again; Andrea returns to the stage. He takes Cloud’s hand.

 

Cloud’s expression barely changes, as Andrea leads him into another dance number. Their dance ultimately ends with a bang and a frenetic light show—plus more glittering confetti.

 

“Encore!” Aerith shrieks, applauding wildly along with all of the other patrons. Even Tifa finds herself swept along, clapping and cheering for Cloud. She’s always believed that if one does something, one should do it well, and that’s what Cloud did. Cloud is a professional, if nothing else, and she can appreciate the confidence it takes to dance like that. She’s proud of him.

 

Suddenly, Aerith throws her arms around Tifa, who startles. “Wasn’t that soooo much fun? Oh my god this is the best date ever!”

 

Wait a second. Date?

 

//

 

When they finally catch up to Cloud, he is standing in a corner across the street from the Honeybee Inn, facing the wall, as if trying to hide his face.

 

“Cloud!”

 

He turns around, surprised. “Tifa?” he asks, and then he suddenly looks like he wants to disappear.

 

Tifa walks right up to him, looking him over intently. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Cloud grunts. “As you can see.”

 

“I sure can,” Aerith giggles. Cloud frowns at her. “Hi. Remember me?”

 

Cloud remains silent.

 

“Are you serious? You don’t recognize me? I’m the girl who gave you the flower in Sector One. Name’s Aerith!”

 

At that, recognition dawns on Cloud’s face. “Right. The flower seller.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Umm, Tifa…are you okay? I thought…that was a really long fall you took.”

 

“As you can see, I’m okay. Aerith here helped me out. I contacted Biggs and he told me that you were coming here to look into Don Corneo.”

 

“Yeah. I was going to infiltrate his place,” Cloud mumbles. “I was gonna just bust in and start swinging, but Jessie said that I’d be able to get in quicker if I joined his weekly…’bridal audition’.”

 

“His what?” Tifa exclaims.

 

Cloud scoffs. “According to Jessie, it’s exactly what it sounds like.”

 

“Told you Don Corneo was bad news,” Aerith says.

 

“Jessie told me that I had to get Andrea Rhodea’s endorsement to even get a spot in the audition, so…” He glares down at his dress. It looks like something out of a Junon fashion plate from two centuries ago.

 

Tifa puts her hands on her hips. “Cloud, I’m very flattered that you were committed enough to wear makeup…and this dress!”

 

“Nailed it, I know. Thank you. Moving on,” he grumps.

 

“I’m super impressed!” Aerith chirps. “You’re sooo pretty! And such a great dancer, too. You really have the moves!” She shakes a finger at him. “It almost makes up for the fact that you regifted my flower. I hope you don’t have a habit of regifting stuff from other girls.”

 

“Never mind,” Tifa says quickly. Cloud’s expression has morphed from embarrassed to sullen, similar to the expression his younger self wore when being scolded by the schoolteachers back in Nibelheim. Tifa almost smiles at the sight. Despite time, distance, and the intervening trauma of the years apart, it’s almost comforting for Tifa to see something familiar, from a better, quieter time. “Tell us more about your plan, Cloud. Now that I’m here, I’m going to find out why Don Corneo had people looking for me.”

Notes:

I was actually going to take them directly to the sewers but then I was like, no wait I need Tifa to see Cloud dancing

Chapter 4: Aerith II

“I really hope Cloud cuts off those shriveled peas that fat lardball bitch calls balls,” Aerith growls. “Ow, ow. Dammit.”

 

“Hold still, please,” Tifa chides as she casts a Cure spell on Aerith, a cool sensation sinking beneath her skin.

 

In front of them lies the steaming corpse of an enormous horned beast. The majority of its long tongue is stuck to a patch of magically conjured ice on the floor, practically torn out of the monster’s mouth in its struggle to break free as Tifa battered the back of its skull with her fists, the materia on her gloves sparking.

 

A well deserved destruction, Aerith thinks, especially since the damn thing splashed sewage on them!

 

“I’m sorry,” Tifa says, and even in the dim lighting, Aerith can see her contrite expression.

 

What’s with this girl and always apologizing for stuff? It’s kind of endearing but also so frustrating, sometimes.

 

“Don’t apologize. I chose to be here. Well, not here here, but I wasn’t going to leave you alone. It’s not your fault Corneo had a trapdoor to the sewers in his fucking bedroom.” Aerith gets to her feet and wrinkles her nose. Fuck, it stinks down here. Expected, but still. “Look on the bright side. At least Cloud was too busy attacking Corneo, so he didn’t fall in. If I’ve read him right, he’s probably rampaging through the mansion killing everyone right now to avenge you. Which means he’ll be ridding the Planet of Don Corneo…I personally can’t be mad about that. Waste of Lifestream space, honestly.”

 

“I hope he spares some time to warn Barret and the others,” Tifa replies tightly. She looks around. “I don’t want to believe that Shinra would drop the plate on Sector Seven. But…it’s a false hope. I know he’s not lying about this. I just…I just know it.”

 

“Is it a feeling like…like you feel that it’s happened before?”

 

Go. Follow your heart.

Follow them. The yellow flowers.

 

Aerith!

 

“Aerith?”

 

“Huh? Oh, nothing.” Aerith shakes her head.

 

“You sure?” Tifa steps closer. “You looked…never mind.”

 

“No, you can say it.” Aerith nods at her. “I wanna hear what you have to say.”

 

“Well…I was saying that was exactly what it felt like.” Tifa smiles, a grim little slash across her pretty face. “And you…you looked like, you knew something, and it was about to make you cry.”

 

“Whatever it is…I think I’ve forgotten it.” This happens more often than she’d like. And every time Aerith gets this feeling, her mother’s materia loses more of its white hue, and she wonders how much longer it will be until it’s entirely clear. “Right now, it’s more important that we get out of here.”

 

“Right. We need to get to Sector Seven, quickly.” Tifa looks around, considering. “Not my first time in the sewers. If I can find the main trunk line, I know how to find the way out from there.”

 

“Oh? What were you up to in the sewers?” Aerith asks.

 

Tifa chuckles dryly. “Plotting against Shinra. You know, the usual.”

 

“Sounds like fun to me.” Aerith pinches her nose. “Except for the smell.”

 

Following the air currents brings them to a point where they have to cross a sluiceway in order to get to the trunk line. Laid across the conduit are a few floating metal platforms that might serve as a bridge.

 

Tifa, sure-footed and quick, crosses over first. “Be careful,” she says. “Don’t rush.”

 

“But I thought we had to hurry,” Aerith says. The moment she steps onto the first platform, however, it heaves beneath her feet. “Shit.”

 

She tries her hardest to maintain a shaky balance, and she manages to make it across halfway. Then, when the last platform rolls a bit too much underneath her, she accidentally puts a foot down too heavily and overcompensates. The platform pitches off to the side, threatening to dump her into the sewage flow.

 

“Jump!” Tifa shouts, reaching out for her. Aerith doesn’t know how she managed to get the physics to work, but she manages to push off with enough force to leap forward. Tifa grabs her outstretched hand and pulls her up onto the other side.

 

Aerith collides with Tifa from the force of Tifa’s tugging, and Tifa slings an arm around Aerith, bracing her in order to stop her forward momentum.

 

In such close proximity, now Aerith can feel (and not just see) the well-honed strength and control in every part of Tifa’s body—the parts that Aerith’s body is currently touching, that is, mostly the arms and shoulders. Tifa’s skin is warm and slightly clammy, the dim lights of the sewer casting a sheen on Tifa and drawing a pleasing contrast of light and shadow on the flow and flex of muscle beneath her skin.

 

One of the things that Ifalna—Aerith’s birth mother—had been able to teach Aerith before she died, was how to recognize beauty when she saw it, no matter where she was: in the slums, where in the absence of her mother’s paintings the colors returned to Aerith via the flowers she grew, in the brief reprieve of her adolescence, and even here and now, one lone moment in a parade of moments rushing her towards a destiny that the Planet keeps hinting at for her. Aerith thinks that not even the stink and gloom of these sewers can obscure this beauty.

 

“You okay?” Tifa murmurs. Her hold on Aerith shifts and loosens—still too caught up in her head to let go, Aerith grips Tifa’s shoulders tighter and feels the firm muscles swell underneath her palm. She looks up to see the concern in Tifa’s face and feels a blush crawling up her neck.

 

Oh, no, it can’t be that—it’s just the exertion from fighting monsters and crossing these damn sewers. Aerith scrabbles for the dregs of her dignity. “I’m fine,” she warbles, and adds flippantly, “So are your muscles.”

 

“The Honeygirl who was sitting with us in the booth earlier apparently thought the same thing—she kept touching my arm.” Tifa’s smile is not the dour one from earlier, but clearly amused. “Like you’re doing now.”

 

“Can you blame me, though?” Aerith pouts. “Wait. Do you…not like it?”

 

“I don’t mind. I know what my body is; I worked really hard to get it to this point. And if I really minded, I’d say something. Let’s keep moving.”

 

Tifa withdraws and continues walking. Despite her blood still running warm from exertion and Tifa’s recent proximity, Aerith’s skin feels colder now.

 

It’s probably just the sweat.

 

//

 

The longer they stay in the sewers, the more anxious Tifa becomes, especially when they’re being held up by an entire menagerie of monsters at every turn. Aerith doesn’t like how the worry bears down on Tifa’s shoulders. It looks all sorts of wrong, and even worse, it looks like something Tifa is accustomed to—as if she’s used to something always grinding her down, somehow. Was it beneath this heavy weight that her body had to learn to grow strong?

 

Aerith tries her best to move Tifa’s mind onto brighter things, to keep both their spirits up as she follows her through the darkened tunnels.

 

 

“That was a really good idea you had, telling me to freeze the floor so that…uh, thing’s tongue got stuck,” Aerith says. “I’d never have thought of that.”

 

“Where I grew up, it gets pretty cold in the winter. Below freezing, actually. Every year, whenever the metal columns of the water tower would freeze over, the boys would dare each other to lick the frozen metal. Not a good idea, because their tongues would get stuck to the pole.” Tifa smirks slightly. “Luckily that thing had a really long tongue and the floor was covered in all those metal grates.”

 

“Did Cloud join in?”

 

“No…he didn’t like hanging out with the other boys. Was always getting into fights with them.”

 

“Oh, he was a jelly boy,” Aerith coos.

 

“Aerith, it really wasn’t like that.”

 

“If you say so. But then how do you explain him giving you such a special flower? I should’ve charged him for it if I knew he was going to give my gift away to another girl. When other guys give my flowers to girls, I make sure they pay for them!”

 

So it goes; between fighting the sewer monsters, emerging from the sewers proper into a very empty water treatment facility (seriously, does anyone work here at all?), locating control panels to raise and lower water levels to facilitate their escape, they exchange more lighthearted bits and pieces of information, as new friends (Aerith truly hopes they are) should do. Tifa is a little less reserved than she was at Aerith’s house—too preoccupied with being the perfect houseguest to really relax.

 

 

“We’re almost there!” Tifa says. She walks up to a locked gate and rattles it. “Hmm. I think we can get there faster if we can break through this gate. Aerith, if you would.”

 

“With pleasure,” Aerith says, and casts a quick series of Blizzara spells on the lock and hinges. Tifa’s foot sweeps out and the gate crumples inward with a loud, rattling crash.

 

With a grunt, Tifa grabs the mangled metal and rips the gate off its damaged hinges.

 

That’s…sexy?

 

“Good job. Now come on,” says Tifa, oblivious to Aerith’s thoughts as she lopes up the stairwell.

 

When they finally burst out of the door—an employee entrance, most likely—Aerith nearly laughs when she finally feels fresh air (it’s still air underneath the plate, but ten times better than the sewer!). However, Tifa’s expression is less than pleased. Her apprehensive eyes are seeking out the Sector Seven pillar. Even from this distance—they’re still somewhere in Sector Six—they can make out the rattle of gunfire and flashes of flame from explosives being set off on the pillar itself. A helicopter flies overhead; Aerith quickly pulls Tifa back into the shadows cast by the scrap piles.

 

“Damn it,” Tifa mutters, “we’re so close.” However, they are surrounded by a large scrapyard, piled high with discarded shipping containers and defunct locomotives. There is even less light here than there was in the sewers. Tifa appears frozen in place, as if she realizes just where they are.

 

The entrance to the train graveyard.

 

The Leaf House kids said it was haunted—no one has ever corrected them because they’re right. Aerith knows it better than anyone. She can hear and feel the thrumming, the turmoil beneath her skin, raising goosebumps—the convulsions of souls that have lingered too long outside of the Lifestream, whether they wanted it or not. The haunting part doesn’t scare Aerith much; being privy to the voices in the Lifestream for all her life has more or less inured her to ghosts.

 

“Oh,” Tifa whispers, and apparently she knows the stories too, because her whole body shrinks back in a way she never did in the sewers, at Don Corneo’s, or in Reno’s face.

 

Is Tifa scared of ghosts?

 

It would be adorable if it weren’t…currently inconvenient.

 

“If we want to get there in time…the fastest way out is through,” Aerith says. Tifa turns to look at her, pleadingly. She really is scared. “I’m not saying we should. We’ll try to find another way, but—”

 

“No. No, you’re right.” Tifa replies; even in the lack of light Aerith can see her trembling. “We have to.”

 

Impulsively, Aerith takes one of Tifa’s hands in her own, wrapping her fingers around a tightly balled fist. “Don’t worry, I’ll be with you.”

 

 

//

 

 

If Aerith ever found the time to sit down and really process what was happening, she might ponder more on why Eligor—Well met, Ancient. I am Eligor, who feedeth on terror, the demon had hissed in her mind—had chosen to take her away, and not Tifa, who would probably have been easier prey if fear really was what fed it.

 

Of course, the answer probably had more to do with Aerith’s ancestry. As a supernatural being, Eligor had clearly known who—what—she is, so he probably wanted something from her. Or wanted her dead so that it could feed on her soul, whatever. Probably thought a Cetra’s soul would be much better eating than those of lost children.

 

Not that she had to find out which it was, because out of the inky darkness Tifa suddenly came running and barreled into her, tackling Aerith out of the way of Eligor’s spear, which came crashing down at the spot where Aerith had been kneeling.

 

“I found you,” Tifa panted, a mixture of fright and resolve twisting her features. “Aerith. You just disappeared and I—I thought…”

 

“You found me,” Aerith affirms shakily. She grabs Tifa’s arm as Tifa hauls her to her feet. The wheels of Eligor’s chariot clatter as it races in a tight circle around them, the steed’s red eyes glaring at them through the darkness.  “But first we have to take care of this guy.”

 

Eligor does not go down easily—but once Aerith disables the chariot wheels, Tifa is able to get in close enough to deal some damage to the steed. At such close range, Eligor can’t use the spear effectively.

 

“Aerith, hit it as hard as you can!” Tifa yells. When Aerith hesitates, because Tifa is still practically on top of Eligor, she adds, “Don’t hesitate! Trust me!”

 

Standing in the ward she had cast, Aerith calls upon the materia in her staff—the fire materia flares to life at her beckoning, and a wall of flames rushes at Eligor and swallows it whole.

 

“Tifa!” Aerith cries, eyes roving for any sign of her. At that moment, a familiar shadow leaps high above the conjured inferno and lands in a crouch in front of Aerith. Tifa stands up and grins at her.

 

“Told you to trust me.”

 

Eligor is gone, a wisp of smoke the only sign it was ever there. She knows it is gone because the trapped and lingering souls are no longer there, the train graveyard having finally gone quiet without Eligor to hinder their return to the Lifestream.

 

There’s no time to relish that victory, though. They still have to get to Sector Seven.

 

“We just have to get past that fence there,” Tifa is saying, pointing across a wide, empty lot to a tall wire fence. “Come on!”

 

The sound of a helicopter buzzing overhead gets louder and closer as they run across the lot. Aerith’s hair whips into her face as the helicopter descends and lands right between the two women and the fence they were trying to reach.

 

“Shit,” Aerith mutters, as Tifa holds out an arm to shield her. The Shinra logo on the side of the helicopter stares them in the face.

 

The helicopter’s floodlight is on, illuminating the open lot as the door opens and four security officers pour out, rifles aimed towards them.

 

Behind them is Tseng, who approaches them with his gun drawn.

Notes:

Got rid of Corneo and Abzu early on (good riddance!), but at the cost of Tseng catching up to them before they reach the pillar :(

Chapter 5: Tifa III

It is nighttime when Tifa loses her home, again.

 

 

 

Tifa presses a hand to a very recently healed injury at her stomach. While no trace of the wound remains, the fabric of her shirt near that area is bloodstained—the only memento of the bullet that had struck her. A whimpering Marlene is secured to Tifa’s back in a makeshift sling across her back, to keep Tifa’s hands free in case she needs them. “Tifa, where are we going?”

 

“A friend’s house,” Tifa replies, voice hoarse from unshed tears. Tears she can’t shed, for Marlene’s sake.

 

The plate had dropped, just as Don Corneo had said it would—collapsing the neighborhoods on top of the plate and crushing the slums beneath. All around them are the sounds of collapsing infrastructure in the immediate aftermath, with the occasional violent tremor.

 

“Tifa, where’s Daddy?”

 

Where is Barret?

 

“He’s out there, fighting to keep us safe.”

 

Marlene sniffles. “They destroyed the bar.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Where are we gonna live now?”

 

“For now, my friend told me to bring you to her house. She says that you can stay there.”

 

Tifa plods through Sector Six’s collapsed expressway, the same passage that she and Aerith had cleared of monsters only the day before while on their way to Wall Market. It would take a day or two for monsters to filter back inside, which will grant refugees from Seven a short reprieve from them, at least—but Tifa gleans little relief from the thought. While Cloud, Barret, and the others are still very much on her mind, it’s Aerith who’s currently at the forefront.

 

Aerith, who had taken Tifa’s hand and led the way through the train graveyard, only for them to be cornered by Shinra just before reaching Sector Seven. One of the security officers had apparently recognized Tifa as AVALANCHE, and with a shout of “Fucking terrorist!” had shot her without warning.

 

“Stand down!” the Turk had barked, as Tifa collapsed, clutching her abdomen. Aerith threw herself on top of Tifa, shielding her in case any further bullets were fired. “Stop it!” Aerith had screamed.

 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Because it hadn’t happened. This didn’t happen. It’s not happening. Why is this happening?

That was all Tifa could think of at that moment as blood blossomed on her skin, seeping into her clothes.

 

Aerith, distraught, had knelt over Tifa’s prone form and clasped her hands together. Her mouth had moved—Tifa couldn’t hear what she was saying.

 

Then there was a burst of viridescent light, the color of Aerith’s eyes. The light had swelled majestically and sent luminous ripples over their surroundings, and then an electrifying surge of healing magic—far and away more powerful than any curative spell Tifa remembered feeling—rushed like a flash flood through her blood vessels. Almost immediately, the bullet hole in Tifa’s abdomen had closed up, her tissues knitting back together. When the luminescence receded, she could see the gobsmacked expressions on the security officers’ faces—it would’ve been funny if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

 

Aerith had saved her life.

 

And then Aerith had given herself up to Shinra in exchange for Tifa’s freedom.

 

Aerith, who had implored Tifa to find Marlene before the plate fell, and run. She’d bargained with the Turk to give Tifa just enough time to find Marlene and get her to safety, before the plate dropped on Sector Seven. “Take her to my mom’s house,” she’d said. “Tell her what happened.”

 

Aerith, now gone, lost to Shinra’s clutches.

 

 

 

She’s gone, Cloud, she’s not coming back.

What do you mean? She’s right here.

Cloud! Stop it!

 

 

A small sob from Marlene interrupts the confusing, distant voices in Tifa’s head. Tifa wipes the blurriness from her eyes and continues walking.

 

 

 

When the helicopter had borne Aerith away, Tifa had turned and raced towards Sector Seven. Her legs were unsteady and weak beneath her, despite her body being fully healed by Aerith. It was as though her mind had not quite caught up with the fact that she was no longer injured.

 

She ran through streets aflame with burning debris, and found Marlene crying beneath the counter at Seventh Heaven, which was as of that moment still untouched somehow.

 

Not for long, though. Tifa had swept Marlene up into her arms and ran for the entrance to the underground service tunnel leading to Sector Six, where she found Marle, directing the evacuation efforts. She’d wanted to stay behind and help, but any chance to do so had been firmly opposed by Marle.

 

“I don’t think so!” Marle had barked, more harshly than she’d ever spoken to Tifa before. “Take the little girl and get out of here. If it’s true that someone bought you time to get in, then you had better not squander it by risking yourself further! Got it? I’ll stop you if you try—don’t think I won’t!”

 

//

 

The streets of Sector Five are eerily quiet despite the large number of people gathered outside, clinging to each other in disbelief at whatever they can see and hear of the enormous conflagration caused by the plate’s collapse. Others have their eyes glued to the newscast playing on the large screen at a street corner that Aerith and Tifa had passed yesterday, showing an aerial view of the burning hellscape that used to be Sector Seven.

 

There is weeping sprinkled amongst the mostly stunned silence—hardly anyone spares a look at the young woman who is carrying a little girl on her back, trudging through the shantytown towards the Gainsborough house. Tifa doesn’t dare to look at the screen, to see the devastation Shinra had brought to bear—this time, her actions had helped paved the way for it, and innocent bystanders had paid the price.

 

“Wow,” Marlene whispers when Tifa walks down the path leading to the Gainsborough house. It’s also quiet here, but a peaceful kind of silence—as if nothing could pierce the serenity of this home. Not even Tifa herself. “There’s lots of flowers here.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It smells nice,” Marlene says. “Not like everywhere else. Is this where your friend lives?”

 

“That’s right.” Tifa’s steps slow down as she approaches the porch. The lights are on inside the house.

Is Elmyra waiting up for Aerith?

Guilt stings Tifa as she swallows past the lump in her throat and undoes the sling, setting Marlene down on her feet. She crouches down to Marlene’s eye level. “My friend’s name is Aerith, and we’re going to meet her mommy, Mrs. Gainsborough. Can you be a good girl for her?”

 

“Uh-huh!”

 

Tifa nods and picks Marlene up again, carrying her towards the front door. Before she can knock, Elmyra opens the door.

 

“…Miss Lockhart?”

 

“Mrs. Gainsborough,” Tifa begins, but to her shame, the tears she’d been holding back since Aerith had been taken are now blurring her eyes. She blinks, and they begin to run in wet tracks down her dusty face. “I’m sorry for disturbing you this late. This is my friend’s daughter, Marlene. May we come in?”

 

//

 

Elmyra allows Tifa to put Marlene to bed in Aerith’s room. After washing up and being scrubbed thoroughly clean, Marlene had fallen asleep as soon as Tifa had tucked her in.

 

Once Tifa has finally, finally washed off the stink of the sewers, compounded by sweat and smoke, Tifa returns briefly to Aerith’s room to check on Marlene again. She wonders if Shinra had let Aerith have a shower, too. From the way the Turk had bowed his head slightly and made way for Aerith to board the helicopter—as though Aerith was someone important—wouldn’t they let her have one, at least?

 

She thumbs the hem of the shirt borrowed from Aerith’s wardrobe; she hadn’t looked too closely, as she doesn’t dare; the least she could do was afford Aerith a little more privacy. From what Tifa did see, the room isn’t messy, but still very much lived in—an easel in the corner with a half-finished painting on canvas, drying flowers hanging from the wall, stationery and pens scattered across the desk. It looks as though Aerith had left her room yesterday expecting to return.

 

She isn’t. Knowing Shinra, she might not ever—and it’s Tifa’s fault.

 

Taking a deep breath, Tifa tucks the covers up more snugly around Marlene and leaves the room, descending the stairs.

It’s time to face Aerith’s mother and explain to her why her daughter isn’t coming home.

 

Elmyra is seated at the kitchen table, two mugs of tea in front of her. “Miss Lockhart,” she says, when Tifa appears at the foot of the stairs. “Come, sit. It seems that we have a lot to talk about.”

 

Tifa nods, and takes the seat across from Elmyra, who slides a mug over to her. “Thank you.” She stares down into the steaming liquid. “Mrs. Gainsborough, as I mentioned earlier…once again, I apologize. It’s my fault that Aerith was taken. I—I have no excuses. I’m truly sorry.”

 

Elmyra is quiet for a moment, and then sighs. “Aerith has never done anything that she didn’t choose to do. It wouldn’t be fair of me to blame you for her choices. Besides…” she shakes her head. “It was only a matter of time before she ended up back there.”

 

Tifa looks up. “Back there? Back to Shinra?”

 

“Yes.” Elmyra meets Tifa’s gaze solemnly. “The truth is…Aerith’s not my daughter. Not by blood.”

 

//

 

The tale Elmyra tells is a tragic one: how she found Aerith as a child at the train station, a seven year old girl seeking help for her dying mother and not finding it; how Elmyra came to adopt Aerith afterwards; how she learned that Aerith was the last descendant of the Ancients, a race that could commune with the Planet; how for that reason Shinra had kept Aerith and her mother imprisoned until they managed to escape, only for Shinra to find Aerith again—and since then Shinra had constantly dogged Aerith’s steps throughout her life.

 

All of it only makes Tifa feel worse. For Aerith to lose her birth mother—Tifa knows all too well what that’s like. It had been a grief so tangible in her youth that it became an indelible part of her now that she’s older.

 

But to be the last of her kind, her mother’s life snuffed out because Shinra’s greed knows no bounds?

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

“So yes, Aerith is an Ancient. Probably the last one living.” Elmyra looks at Tifa. “Did Aerith tell you that?”

 

Tifa shakes her head. “Not from her, directly. It was…said in my presence.”

 

“The only reason they didn’t take her back sooner was that they said she had to go willingly. Or so Tseng said.” Tseng must be the Turk who had caught up with them before they reached the pillar, as he matched Elmyra’s description in her story. “They bothered her less when she was alone.”

 

It made sense that they would try to get to Aerith if she was with someone else, because Aerith had proved herself the type of person who would give herself over to her former jailers if it meant preventing someone else from getting hurt. The redheaded Turk had tried before and failed at the church, but things had worked out better for Tseng.

 

Tifa thinks of how Aerith had walked past Tseng to the helicopter, her head held high. She must’ve known that she might be facing her mother’s fate if she returned.

And yet Aerith had been the very picture of dignity; it made Tseng and the Shinra troopers look like the spineless cowards that they really were.

 

“If it hadn’t been you, they would’ve tried it with someone else. My hope that they won’t treat Aerith too badly comes from the fact that they never laid a hand on me,” Elmyra says.

 

Tifa bites her lip. “Mrs. Gainsborough. Even if they treat her well…it’s still Shinra. She can’t stay there.”

 

Elmyra’s eyes flash. “And so? What do you plan to do? Go after her and take her back? Now that they have her, they won’t let her go so easily. Not with how long they’ve been following her. You’re only going to make everything worse, Miss Lockhart!”

 

It takes much of Tifa’s self-discipline not to outwardly flinch, because Elmyra isn’t wrong. Tifa deserves Elmyra’s angry words, because it’s her fault Aerith even had to make the choice to go back. But she can’t just leave Aerith to her fate.

 

And how else can she ever make up for all the wrong that she’s done? Not just to Aerith, but to her second home. Nothing she can do will reverse the Sector Seven platefall; nothing can bring back the innocent people who were massacred both above and below the plate because she and her friends had given Shinra their convenient scapegoat.

 

But if she could get Aerith back, she’d feel a little less like everything has been taken from her. That maybe not everything is lost—that not everything she touches falls apart.

 

However, before either of them can say anything, Barret bursts through the front door.

 

“Tifa! Marlene!” He towers over Elmyra, who has stood up out of her chair in shock at the sudden intrusion. “Where’s Marlene?” he shouts.

 

“Barret!” Cloud’s voice chides from somewhere behind him, while Tifa immediately steps in between Barret and Elmyra.

 

“Tifa!” Barret grabs her shoulder. “You’re safe. Thank god. Marlene?”

 

“She’s fine. She’s upstairs, sleeping. Please. Not so loud,” Tifa pleads.

 

Barret immediately steps backwards with a contrite look on his face. “Right. Apologies, ma’am,” he says to Elmyra. “Marlene’s my daughter. Didn’t mean to make no trouble for you.”

 

Cloud steps out from behind Barret. Ignoring Elmyra’s pointed look at his glowing mako eyes and big sword, he says, “Tifa. The Turks took Aerith.”

 

Tifa bows her head. “I know. It’s my fault.”

Notes:

:(

We’ll stick with Tifa for at least one more part, before we return to Aerith.

Chapter 6: Tifa IV

Barret and Cloud are sleeping in Aerith’s room with Marlene, while a restless Tifa leaves the house and walks outside, to the flower beds.

 

She knows that she should sleep, but she can’t.

 

The flowers’ fragrance is stronger at night. Tifa sits down on the bank overlooking the moat, among the flowers, and closes her eyes, listening to the sound of the water as it flows on, unheeding of her troubles.

 

Tifa recalls the day she had spent with Aerith before they went to Wall Market. Aside from fighting monsters, Aerith had roped Tifa into helping her pick flowers from the garden for the Leaf House. “I talk to them, you know. The flowers,” Aerith had said, and Tifa hadn’t known if she was joking or not.

 

An idle thought comes to Tifa: if she talks to the flowers, will Aerith be able to hear what she says? Can Ancients do that? From what Elmyra had told her (and Barret, being an observant planetologist, had corroborated it), the Planet speaks to the Ancients. And flowers spring from the Planet, so if Tifa speaks to the flowers, the Planet might carry her words to the ears of the last Ancient—

 

The clank of a large sword and the rustle of boots wading through greenery causes Tifa’s thoughts to dissipate. She looks over her shoulder to see Cloud standing behind her, at a respectable distance. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.

 

For all of Cloud’s posturing as the aloof, cocky SOLDIER, his concern and thoughtfulness always manage to shine through somehow. The sullen boy from Nibelheim really did some growing up after all.

 

“No,” she admits. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

 

Cloud shrugs. “I’m a light sleeper. It’s a SOLDIER thing.” He walks closer, puts his sword down and sits down next to her, although he still maintains a wide berth. “So…uh…when you and Aerith fell into the sewers, I wanted to go after you, but Leslie convinced me to leave and warn the others instead. Said that you guys might actually be safer down there, if the plate really did drop.”

 

Tifa chuckles, a tiny brittle sound. “Aerith was hoping that you would cut off Corneo’s balls first.”

 

Cloud smirks slightly. “Yeah. You, uh…probably didn’t want to stick around for that. Without his balls—and more importantly, without his head—he can’t hold any more bridal auditions ever again.” Cloud sits back, leaning on his hands. “And I wasn’t about to let his goons have their way with the two other girls who came in to audition with me, so they had to go, too. Caught’em all with their pants down.” He makes a swiping motion with his hand. “It was just too easy.”

 

Something about Cloud’s casual tone strikes a bad chord in Tifa’s mind. Cloud is a SOLDIER, of course he’s killed his fair share of people, but it never crossed Tifa’s mind that he could be bloodthirsty. “I hope you didn’t hurt the girls.”

 

“Nah. Leslie helped them get away.” The only one of Corneo’s lackeys who had some kind of a conscience, it seems—he’d been the one to let Tifa and Aerith inside to follow Cloud while Corneo and the bulk of his men were distracted with the bridal audition. “I went back to Sector Seven…turns out that AVALANCHE HQ already got wind of the plan to drop the plate, and Barret was en route with the others. So I followed, and we fought our way up the pillar. When Barret and I reached the top, we had to fight the Turks. Turns out they had the access code to drop the plate. They’re the ones who pressed the button. While we were trying to reverse it, one of them called into the computer system, just to gloat at us,” Cloud mutters. “He had Aerith with him. She told me what she could before he cut her off. Aerith said we might find you and Marlene at her house in Sector Five.”

 

“Oh.” Tifa looks up at the dimmed sunlamp in the plate above Sector Five.

 

“The plate separation couldn’t be stopped once the Turks initiated it. No failsafes or anything.” Cloud shakes his head. “Like they built the thing intending for it to drop someday. Fucking Shinra.”

 

She should have been there with them. Wasn’t she supposed to be there? Why hadn’t she been there?

 

“Barret managed to zip line us out of there and we went to Sector Five to look for you. We would’ve spent the whole night searching the sector for Aerith’s house, if we hadn’t run into a volunteer at the orphanage that’s around here. She pointed us in the right direction. So…yeah. Um. There’s more. No easy way to say this, but—you need to know.”

 

“Cloud?”

 

Cloud’s voice is soft, almost hesitant—and suddenly Tifa dreads what he has to say. “Wedge is okay. He did get hurt, but he managed to get away from the pillar to help evacuate Sector Seven. Wymer found him and got him to a clinic in Five—he’ll be fine. Biggs and Jessie, though…I was with them at the pillar. They…” Cloud clears his throat. “They didn’t make it.”

 

No.

 

Not Biggs. Not Jessie.

 

“No,” Tifa whispers.

 

Tifa! We have to turn back!

 

Tifa shakes her head violently. “Cloud, no. Don’t say that.”

 

She was supposed to be there for Jessie. Jessie can’t just be…gone. Not like that.

 

“I’m sorry, Tifa.”

 

You’re not going to find her here. She’s gone.

 

“Shut up,” Tifa says. She buries her face in her hands and she weeps, loud and ugly and utterly wretched.

 

 

//

 

 

“Tifa.”

 

Tifa opens her eyes. She’s lying among Aerith’s  flowers, still covered in the darkness of night. She turns her head to see Aerith bending over her, smiling.

 

“Aerith!” Tifa scrambles to her feet. Isn’t Aerith still in Shinra’s custody? She reaches out a tentative hand. “Are you really here? Or—or is this a dream?”

 

Aerith takes Tifa’s outstretched hand. “You’re right…I’m not really here,” she says, but Tifa can still feel her squeezing Tifa’s fingers. It feels real enough. “The Planet is letting me to talk to you, thanks to these friends.” She nods at the flowers.

 

“It’s because you’re an Ancient, isn’t it,” Tifa murmurs. Her other hand comes up, so that she’s holding Aerith’s hand in both of hers.

 

Aerith looks back briefly at her house. “Mom told you?”

 

“Yeah.” Tifa shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I was the one who got you into this mess.”

 

“Don’t say that. It’s okay. No, really, Tifa. I had to protect you. And like I said before, I’m not some princess who needs to be coddled.” Aerith tilts her head thoughtfully. “From a certain perspective, one could say that I’ve just gone back to my childhood home. The only home I knew for the first seven years of my life.”

 

“Shinra headquarters.” At least, according to Elmyra’s story, which she had gleaned from what Aerith had told her when she was younger.

 

Aerith nods. “It sucked, but still, I guess it was home, because my mom was there with me.”

 

“Your birth mother?”

 

“Yeah. Looks like Mom told you about her too.” Aerith looks down at their joined hands for a while, and then laughs a little self-deprecatingly. “Gosh. I had this whole speech ready to go in my head, but…it’s kind of useless now. Then again…it was a bit hypocritical, so maybe it’s for the best.”

 

“Aerith.” Tifa catches Aerith’s eyes and gazes at her earnestly. “I have to get you out of there. Whatever they did to your mother…I can’t just sit by and let them do that to you, too. I’ve…I just lost more people I care about. I’m sick of it. No matter how small my chances are…as long as there’s a way in, I have to do something.”

 

Tears roll down her face, which is still sticky from the tears already shed in the hours prior. More fool she was, to think that she had no more tears. A frustrated sob trips out of her mouth.

 

“Oh, Tifa.” Suddenly Aerith’s other hand is on her cheek, gently brushing away the tears. Her eyes are the saddest that Tifa’s ever seen them; there is no trace of the fun, spirited Aerith with whom Tifa had spent time over the past two days (or thereabouts). This Aerith is sadder, wiser, but no less beautiful.

 

Tifa takes a deep breath as Aerith wipes off the last of the teardrops. Aerith’s hand falls to her side.

 

“You’re not going to tell me not to, are you?”

 

“No,” Aerith says, and the thumb of her hand still enclosed in Tifa’s grasp strokes the gloved knuckles. As the pad of Aerith’s thumb runs over the materia orbs in Tifa’s glove, they glitter brightly at her touch. “I’m going to tell you what I couldn’t tell you earlier.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Go. Follow your heart.”

 

//

 

Tifa winces against the light pouring across her face. The sunlamps are being turned back up to daytime levels. Beyond the edge of the plate, which is visible from Aerith’s house, is a smoggy sky.

 

“Tifa?” It’s Cloud, striding towards her. At some point, he must’ve gone back to the house. “You fell asleep out here, in the flower bed.”

 

She sits up and turns to look at Cloud.

 

Her voice is resolute when she says, “Cloud, I’m going to get Aerith back. I’m not letting her stay there one more day.”

 

To Cloud’s credit, he doesn’t question her. All he says is, “Then I’m going with you.”

 

//

 

Barret, bless him, refuses to be left behind.

 

“I ain’t letting Shinra keep an Ancient captive,” he says. “Shinra thinks they own her or some shit? They really out here keeping her locked up, so that that can lay claim to the legacy of the greatest civilization that ever was! Once they get their grubby hands on her people’s Promised Land, if it’s even real—they gonna gobble it up, like they done to everything else. Greedy bastards!”

 

Tifa expects that it will be much harder to convince Elmyra. Obviously, they could just go without her permission (as seems to be Aerith’s habit), but it’s important to Tifa that Elmyra should be informed.

 

Cloud does his best to back her up. “When Barret and I were looking for survivors in Sector Seven last night,” he says, “we came across an underground bunker that the platefall had exposed due to the extensive damage. Actually…it was a Shinra laboratory. Right beneath the sector. Nobody had been down there for a while, from the looks of it. What we found were mako tanks containing human corpses. They were being experimented on.” Cloud doesn’t mince his words. “Mrs. Gainsborough, I was in SOLDIER. And believe me when I say that you can’t trust Shinra with Aerith. She’s just a number, a piece of meat to them. Like I was.” He points to his mako eyes.

 

Elmyra sits at her kitchen table, slumped over. She looks haggard, sitting in the light from the window; a sight Tifa recognizes…somehow, somewhere.

 

 

Cloud, wasn’t your last delivery in Kalm? …Have you been to see Mrs. Gainsborough?

 

No.

 

Cloud…

 

What do you want me to say, Tifa? She asked us to bring Aerith back to her. We failed. What makes you think I’d be able to face her, when even you can’t do it? …What makes you think she wants to see either you or me, when she’ll never see Aerith again?

 

 

 

Tifa grits her teeth. More faraway voices in her head. Voices she thought knew, something she thought she might have said…but when? It’s not possible.

 

She turns to Elmyra. “Mrs. Gainsborough…Aerith saved my life. I want to repay her someday, and that can’t happen if Shinra keeps her locked up.”

 

Elmyra is silent for a long moment, and then she looks up. Her eyes are full of grief, and Tifa’s heart aches.

 

“I knew someday I’d have to let my baby go,” Elmyra says quietly. “I’d ask you to bring her back to me…but I know better. If you do manage to get Aerith out of there…she can’t come back to Midgar. Shinra will chase her to the ends of the earth.” She shakes her head. “If you get her out of there, take her far away from here. And I want you to give her this.” Elmyra takes out an envelope from her apron and hands it to Tifa, who takes it carefully. “Do that, and I’ll look after Marlene. She can stay with me as long as she needs to.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Barret rumbles solemnly. “We’ll do as you say. If we can get word to you, we will.”

 

//

 

While Barret is saying goodbye to Marlene, Tifa ushers Cloud out the front door.

 

“We’ve got to find a way to get topside,” she says. “Transportation up to the plate is probably a complete mess—even assuming we could even use the system without passes.”

 

Cloud nods. “I have a lead.” He points in the direction of Sector Six. “Gonna check if Leslie’s still hanging around Wall Market; he might know a way up.”

 

Barret walks out of the house, sliding on his sunglasses. With a deep sigh, he says, “She’s stronger than me.” He looks down at them. “All right. Let’s go.”

 

 

 

Wall Market is dull and quiet during the daytime—nothing at all like it was during the nighttime “date” (or so Aerith called it). Even so, there’s plenty of people milling around; the snatches of conversations that Tifa is able to pick up aren’t very encouraging. Apparently, Shinra has convinced the public that not only is AVALANCHE responsible for the Sector Seven tragedy, but also that they are being funded by Wutai.

 

“The hell we are,” Barret growls. “Think we’d be struggling to make ends meet if we were being funded by a rival government? Pah!”

 

“Pretty obvious tactic,” Cloud mutters. “Plant the narrative associating AVALANCHE with Wutai, and presto—your average citizen is convinced that AVALANCHE never cared about the Planet in the first place—that they were always in it for power and money.”

 

“It’s not just us they’re accusing,” Tifa says quietly, “but HQ as well. In the end, our differences didn’t matter. We all played right into Shinra’s hands.”

 

They don’t talk about it for the rest of the journey to the late Don Corneo’s lair. Along the way, Cloud helps someone round up his chocobos; the chocobo handler, who works for somebody named Sam, is a bit of a gossip. From him they hear that, with the demise of Don Corneo, the power vacuum that he left behind has more or less thrown the district into chaos. “My boss is one of the circle of businessmen who helped the Don keep order, so to speak,” the handler says, “but now, even he’s worried about the future of the Market. The Don was pulling down gil and connections for us from up topside—some say from Shinra direct—but that’s all gone now. Of course, there’s folks raring to take his spot, but as bad as the Don was, he knew how to do business with Shinra. Don’t think anyone here is at his level—can’t be, since he was in power for so long and didn’t have a clear successor.”

 

 

This outlook is corroborated by Leslie, who they find alone in the late Don Corneo’s Wutai-style lair. “Thought you would’ve moved on already,” Cloud says to him, in lieu of a greeting.

 

Leslie sighs. “Yeah, I was just about to skip town. Don’t get me wrong, life’s better without the Don, but for Wall Market itself, things might get worse before they get better. Andrea and Madam M might stick it out, but…” He shakes his head. “Anyway. Why’d you come back here?”

 

“We need to get topside,” Cloud says. “Since Corneo had connections, and he had access to the sewers, it wouldn’t surprise me that he probably had some way to get up there. You know, without all the fuss.”

 

“That’s a big ask. Normally, I’d ask what’s in it for me but…you’ve already one up on me.”  Leslie looks at Tifa. “I think I owe you and your friend for taking out Abzu down there.”

 

“Abzu?” Tifa frowns. “You mean…the horned monster with the long tongue?”

 

“Yeah. Corneo’s got a passage topside in the sewers—but with Abzu being down there, nobody but him could access it. Luckily, Abzu’s gone now, and so is he.”

 

“Abzu?” Cloud asks.

 

“Never mind, Cloud,” Tifa says. “We need a way topside because that friend who helped me take care of Abzu—she’s in trouble and we need to help her.”

 

“That so,” Leslie rubs his chin. “Y’know, if you need supplies, Corneo had storerooms full of stuff down in the sewers. You might find something worth using.”

 

“Like grappling guns?” Barret asks. “We’re gonna need those for sure.”

 

“Probably.” Leslie motions for them to follow him. “C’mon. I’ll show you the way.”

 

//

 

Leslie is as good as his word. He leads them up a long conduit through the sewers, which leads to the top of the Sector Six plate—or what remained of it. “The Sector Seven plate is just over that wall there,” he says, handing over the grappling guns. They are real high quality ones, used by Shinra military personnel. “What’s left, anyway. If time is of the essence for you guys, however, you’ve got to go that way. It’ll take too long to get to the Sector Five side, and besides, it’s probably crawling with security in Five.”

 

Tifa nods at him earnestly. “Thank you, Leslie. We won’t forget this.”

 

“Nah. You guys did me a favor, with Corneo and everything. This is just me paying you back,” he tells them. “Now go find your friend.”

 

He slings his burlap sack over his shoulder, and scurries off in the opposite direction.

 

//

 

Climbing up the Sector Seven plate is the most perilous climb Tifa has ever made—and that’s saying something, considering that she used to be a guide in the craggy Nibel mountain range. Not only is the rubble extremely unstable, but Shinra has all manner of mechs, troopers and even second and third class SOLDIERs patrolling the area.

 

“Search and rescue my ass. More like they making sure nobody in Seven finds their way back up again,” Barret growls.

 

Slowly but surely, they climb and fight their way up the collapsed plate for the entire afternoon. Cloud’s SOLDIER training proves invaluable here. He directs the flow of battle, calling out orders, swapping out their equipped materia depending on the situation, and doles out potions and ethers as needed. Tifa, in the meantime, keeps a running inventory of the gil and items pilfered from the soldiers, mechs, and various rogue monsters they meet on the way.

 

Of course, Shinra doesn’t let up until the very end—the Valkyrie mech almost proves their undoing, but Cloud’s quick action saves the day. With the mech destroyed, the three of them lie sprawled out on a ledge where the Sector Seven plate had met a topside mainframe, just to catch their breaths. After a few seconds, Cloud stands up and helps Tifa to her feet, as Barret grumbles something about too much excitement.

 

Cloud motions for them to follow him towards topside Midgar. Tifa looks back at the sunset—the first sunset she’s seen in years—one more time.

 

Then she turns her back to it and walks after Cloud and Barret.

 

It’s time to get Aerith back.

Notes:

Omg Tifa told Cloud to shut up! Anyway…

The arrangement of “Tifa’s Theme” that plays during the Tifa Resolution scene in Remake is the first version that really made me sit down and appreciate the tune.

Next up, the Shinra headquarters.

Chapter 7: Aerith III

The only thing separating Aerith from the man who killed her mother is the glass wall of her holding cell.

 

Hojo has been talking to her—at her, actually—for nearly forty-five minutes. Tseng had her brought into Hojo’s lab nearly two hours ago, which means Hojo had kept her waiting in the cell for an hour and fifteen minutes. Bastard.

 

She hasn’t dignified him with a response, and she absolutely refuses to let him goad her into one—not even when he starts his raving about her mother, boasting about how he desecrated her body when Shinra scientists brought it back from the train station.

 

After all that Hojo had done to Ifalna—how he killed her slowly but surely on his operating stages with his needles and scalpels—after all of that, it was too much to expect him and his underlings to give her a proper burial. No, they let this disgusting psychopath, this worm, rip her mother into tiny little pieces and put her in his damned microscope slides.

 

So gleeful and excited is Hojo, recounting his own utter vileness, that he throws himself against the glass of Aerith’s cell in a fit of slavering ecstasy. “As breathtaking in death as in life!” Hojo howls, slapping his sweaty hands against the glass. “As you, my dear! Ifalna was elegance, right down to her cellular structure!”

 

Oh, she hates him.

 

Yet all she does is glare at him.

 

“Aerith, you have inherited her elegance,” he continues, after collecting himself somewhat, “so rest assured that although you are not a full-blooded Ancient, you are still as precious a specimen as your mother. President Shinra has full faith in you, and has instructed me to handle you with care—a sentiment I agree with. However, I must say that your status as the last of the Ancients is an unfortunate limiting factor. Surely, the world be poorer if your race were to die out completely.”

 

It takes all of Aerith’s self-control not to react, because she pretty sure she knows where Hojo is going with this. She saw the other specimens in his lab, she’s had to listen to his interminable rants—he has a fetish for breeding things, for injecting his subjects with foreign cell lines. He calls that research.

 

While President Shinra may hold her up as some kind of mythical creature who will lead him to the Promised Land using whatever mystical mumbo-jumbo powers he thinks she has, to Hojo she’s nothing but another specimen to take apart, to flay open, to breed, to kill.

 

“I did try other avenues,” Hojo muses. “I had obtained your mother’s eggs with the intention of creating offspring. However, the embryos failed to thrive in vitro.” He frowns. “And then that useless fool Hicks discarded the rest of them just when I was ready to conduct the experiment in vivo. It was an accident, or so he claimed. Bah! Pity that he got away before he could be punished for it. Oh, yes, I had the perfect punishment lined up for him.”

 

Aerith’s nails dig into her palms at the mention of Faz. If Hojo hadn’t gotten to him, then he’s still out there somewhere. That possibility is not a comforting one.

 

“How unfortunate for you, dear Aerith,” Hojo resumes. “You could have had siblings. Then, perhaps, you would not be as alone as you are now. But alas…” He leers at her. “Such are the circumstances.”

 

An alarm goes off.

 

“Oh, right. Another meeting,” Hojo sniffs. At last, he turns to leave. “Sit tight. I won’t be long,” he says, and walks away.

 

The moment he disappears from the lab, Aerith’s restraint finally slips. A bitter, breathless cry escapes her lips: the only outlet for her bottomless fury and grief.

 

//

 

Whatever Hojo’s definition of “long” is, Aerith doesn’t know. All she knows is that an hour ticks by and Hojo still doesn’t show up. (Aerith is able to keep time thanks to the control panel screen visible from her cell—who schedules a meeting for nine forty-five at night? President Shinra, apparently.)

 

Small mercies. She occasionally looks over at the neighboring holding cell—a leonine creature with a flame at the end of its tail is lying inside of it, seemingly asleep.

 

Aerith wishes that she could sleep.

 

Her mind flits back to the vision that the Planet had granted her last night during her sleep—she’s surprised that she was able to get any sleep at all, but maybe running through the sewers and fighting Eligor had something to do with it.

 

To her surprise, Tifa had been there in her dream, standing in her garden in Sector Five.

 

Somehow, Aerith had the feeling that this had happened before, and she’d probably said certain things every time—but those dreams hadn’t had Tifa in them, therefore the words she might’ve said before all went out the window.

 

Tifa had been apologetic as always—blaming herself for everything, as usual. She looked tired, but otherwise physically well; there was no trace of the injury on her stomach.

 

I have to get you out of there, Tifa had said. She had been crying. I just lost more people I care about. I’m sick of it.

 

I can’t lose you too goes unspoken. The Lifestream—the Planet, from whence Tifa came and where she will return someday—says it for her, and Aerith hears it loud and clear.

 

On the other hand, Tifa can’t hear whatever Aerith doesn’t say. That’s the gulf between human and Cetra. Tifa can’t hear Aerith’s unsaid words, words like: I hate this place. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.

 

But I don’t regret coming here, if it means I can save you.

 

She wonders if Tifa knows how close she came to death—Aerith knew. She knew that the bullet had struck something vital because Aerith had immediately felt the Lifestream starting to pull at the thread of Tifa’s life, to unravel it and draw it to itself. Aerith had panicked, instinctively reaching out to grab that thread and yank it back using the well of magic within her.

 

This form of healing doesn’t come from materia, but forces Aerith to use her own body as a direct conduit for the Lifestream. The books she’d gotten as payment for the Hedgehog Pies spoke of these kinds of spells, obtainable only by the most skilled mages—and only in times of crisis, because not everyone can tolerate that kind of magic manifesting and rushing through the body all at once.

 

And in the moment it certainly felt like a crisis. She’s only known Tifa for less than two days and yet that connection that allowed her to feel Tifa being pulled away was already there, somehow—as if it had been in place before they met.

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

Even without the Planet, I think I’d rather die than let you die.

 

All of that went unsaid, and so Tifa couldn’t hear it.

 

But Aerith trusts that Tifa is a woman of her word. After all, Tifa beat Reno’s ass, helped Aerith’s mom wash dishes, picked flowers with Aerith, listened patiently to Aerith’s chatter, bought Aerith an overpriced drink without complaining, guided Aerith through the sewers, and braved her fear of ghosts to save Aerith from Eligor. If she says she’s coming to get Aerith out of here, she will damned well do her best, even though the Shinra building is supposed to be the most secure building in the entire city—even at seven years old, Aerith had been aware of how difficult it was to escape the building, and she hasn’t forgotten.

 

Trust me, Tifa had told her while fighting Eligor.

 

The minutes continue to tick by.

 

Suddenly, Hojo comes scuttling back into the lab. He doesn’t even look at her, too focused on getting into the elevator to reach his observation deck. Once he’s there, a back door opens; a squad of Shinra riot troopers and grenadiers rush inside and encircle her holding cell.

 

A man’s voice booms, “The hell is this?”

 

Aerith looks over the heads of the riot troopers, and sees a familiar shock of blond hair and a big sword. It’s Cloud. Her eyes slide to the left and fall on Tifa Lockhart. Aerith jumps to her feet, her heart pounding.

 

They’ve come for her!

 

“Aerith!” Tifa shouts, her fists up in a fighting stance, the materia in her gloves at full blaze.

 

Aerith almost doesn’t hear Hojo’s babbling about data models over the loudspeaker. All of her focus is on Tifa, Cloud, and a tall man they call Barret, who has a prosthetic for his missing hand that looks like the muzzle of an enormous firearm.

 

“We’re taking Aerith back!” Cloud states.

 

“Oh, is that so?” Hojo’s sneering voice replies. “Did the girl not come here of her own free will? Or are you suggesting that she is your personal property?”

 

“She only came here to save Tifa,” Barret yells. “To us she’s a friend! The only one here who thinks she’s personal property is you, bitch!”

 

Undeterred, Hojo continues blathering over the loudspeaker, even as Cloud strikes first.

 

The troopers begin shooting, and Aerith’s heart leaps into her throat—Tifa can’t get shot again, she can’t. To Aerith’s relief, she sees the sheen of a barrier spell surrounding the trio—Barret must have cast it, as she catches sight of the telltale flare of materia glowing on his gun as he begins shooting. The rattle of automatic gunfire fills the room.

 

Common sense tells Aerith not to get too close to the glass—it’s supposedly bulletproof, but she doesn’t know that for sure. However, that doesn’t stop her from inching as close as she dares just so she can see Tifa and the others better. Her neighbor, the leonine creature, is still lying with its head down, seemingly uninterested in the chaos.

 

The riot troopers have their shields to protect them from the hail of bullets from Barret’s gun, but the grenadiers with them don’t. Some of the grenadiers that don’t get mowed down by Barret are dumb enough to rush Cloud and get cut apart by Cloud’s sword—he’s too fast. Others are smarter, however, and take potshots at him and Tifa from a distance.

 

A trio of riot troopers not engaging either Barret or Cloud quickly close ranks right in front of Aerith’s cell, less than three meters away, and put their shields up.

 

“Cloud!” Tifa shouts.

 

“Copy,” Cloud calls back, and Aerith can’t quite believe what she sees next: Tifa leaps on top of Cloud’s sword, her feet on the flat of the blade, and with a hard swing, Cloud launches Tifa into the air.

 

Tifa flies through the air, doing a backflip while airborne. Aerith startles at the thunk of Tifa’s boots against the glass of her cell; Tifa pushes off the glass, and whips herself around into a series of roundhouse kicks to the backs of the riot troopers.

 

The riot troopers go down like bowling pins, their shields sent clattering to the floor. Cloud immediately pounces on one of them, while Tifa deals a vicious, materia-fueled uppercut to another one that actually sends the trooper several meters airborne, body convulsing from the Thundara spell behind Tifa’s strike.

 

The third one is scrambling for his gun, but Tifa is, as expected, much faster. She hurls herself at him. “No more games. It’s over!” she shouts. Her glowing fist sends this trooper flying, and he slams into the glass with such force that Aerith yelps and stumbles backwards, surprised. The glass holds, but from the way it vibrated, another hit like that could change things. Once again, Aerith finds herself completely riveted by Tifa’s display of strength. Like when she had ripped the gate off its hinges in the water treatment plant.

 

Tifa’s absolutely incandescent.

 

Aerith’s pleasant train of thought is quickly derailed when she sees Tifa grappling with another trooper that has run up to them and is giving Tifa a fight. Tifa lets out an actual snarl and somehow manages to throw the trooper over her shoulder. The trooper’s helmet falls off as the backwards momentum of her throw has his head slamming into the glass. Tifa whirls around, grabs him by the neck, and slams his head against the glass again, this time much harder. All Aerith does is watch, jaw hanging open as the trooper goes down. There’s a high chance that his neck was broken.

 

The fury on Tifa’s face immediately melts away, once she realizes what she did, and she steps backwards with a stunned expression. Behind her, Barret’s gun has finally stopped firing, and the Shinra personnel Hojo had brought in are all strewn about the floor.

 

“Where’d that bastard go!” Barret shouts. Hojo is nowhere to be seen or heard. Cloud is slightly crouched over, a hand grabbing his head. Tifa runs over to him.

 

“Barret!” she calls out, pointing at Aerith even as she tries to tend to Cloud. “Get her out of there, first.”

 

“Right!” Barret nods. “Stand back!” he tells Aerith, and fires a round into the keypad next to the door. The lock system short circuits, and the glass door swings open.

 

Aerith is free.

 

She runs out of the holding cell, past the slumped-over forms of the Shinra troopers, towards Tifa.

 

Behind her, she hears paws beating against the floor, leaping away and disappearing into the distance—seems like her neighbor is free, too.

 

Cloud finally straightens up, waving Tifa off. Tifa hardly seems to notice the rebuff, instead reaching out for Aerith. “Aerith! You okay? You’re not hurt?”

 

Her hands—the same hands that could bash in someone’s skull—are gentle, feather-light on Aerith’s elbows as she does a quick scan for injuries.

 

“I’m great,” Aerith declares, and she means it, now that Tifa and her friends are here and she’s out of that damned holding cell. “You put on quite the show for me.”

 

Tifa looks embarrassed and mildly uncomfortable, but she smiles at Aerith anyway. “I might’ve overdone it.”

 

“It was us or them,” Cloud says brusquely.

 

“Oh she was mad mad. We forget sometimes that Tifa can be like a momma elphadunk with her calves stolen, when she wants to be,” Barret chuckles. “Anyway. Nice to meet you, Aerith. I’m Barret.”

 

Aerith grins, stepping back from Tifa to shake his hand—or rather, Barret shakes hers, as his hand is much bigger.

 

“Time for socializing later. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Cloud says.

 

Aerith can’t agree with him more.

Notes:

My favorite Aerith scene in the Remake series is actually the scene with Hojo during the Shinra infiltration. Aerith’s intense effort to keep herself under control as Hojo crows about desecrating her mother’s body is conveyed SO well in the graphics, and when Hojo finally leaves, the gasp she lets out—Briana White deserves awards for those 3 seconds of voice acting alone. That scene made me love and respect Aerith more than ever, as someone who originally got drawn in by Tifa’s character.

Also, I am someone who works as a scientist for her daily bread, and as such, Hojo is a character that inspires great loathing from me. With him probably being a satire of the mad scientist trope, to me he comes across as a hack, a phony, and a thief of his PI’s (Gast) work and resources to further his hobbies without any method other than “haha let’s inject people with stuff”—it’s sloppy and stupid and it almost pisses me off more than his sadism.

Of course, that’s video game science for you.

Chapter 8: Aerith IV

Being in the Shinra building is detrimental for Cloud’s health—especially after he somehow led them to the heart of Hojo’s research facility while looking for a way out, and practically brought them face to face with the Calamity—or at least, the form that Shinra had unearthed.

 

Shinra had definitely done something to Cloud when he was in SOLDIER. Something beyond the mako treatments. Wasn’t Research and Development—that is, Hojo—involved in developing the SOLDIER regimen? Why else would Cloud be reacting the way he did while they were in here? Stumbling as if drunk, head in his hands.

 

The closer they had come to the tank, the louder the Planet screeches, Malady! The Planet is not shy in naming its scourge. Jenova, Jenova, Calamity, Malady!

 

“Jenova,” Aerith repeats aloud.

 

Thy enemy, child. Our enemy! cry the voices in the Lifestream. From her springs all of our people’s woe!

 

“The source of everything.”

 

Aerith doesn’t think that this was a coincidence. The Calamity had used Cloud to bring the last Cetra close to her presence. To size Aerith up, perhaps.

 

The Planet gibbers into her ear: Jenova, the Calamity from the Skies, the implacable enemy of the Cetra. Her only purpose—her only desire—is to devour.

 

That desire, in and of itself, has no rightness or wrongness; all things must end and be subsumed. This is a truth of the universe.

 

But when that desire to devour comes and finds a finite form in finite beings, Jenova assumes her host’s natural inclination and turns herself into the scourge of the planet on which she feeds.

 

Disease leads to Decay, leads to Fear, leads to Envy, leads to Greed, leads to Hatred, leads to Death, leads to Despair.

On and on it goes, and Jenova uses her deceit to perpetuate the cycle, so that she may feed and feed again, until her hosts prove their own destruction and nothing is left for her to do but move on.

So it goes.

 

She came to the Planet two thousand years ago and took form.

 

A form that is Heartless, though she mimes having one.

 

A form that is Faceless—for, having none, she steals the ones she wears.

 

Steals the faces of friends, lovers, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers.

 

“Mother,” Cloud rasps, and collapses in front of the tank.

 

 

//

 

 

Earlier, during their attempt to find a way out, Aerith’s leonine fellow-prisoner—who requests that he be called Red XIII, despite it being the designation that Hojo had given him—had joined their group, after a short confrontation with Barret. Apparently he had been chasing Hojo, but was too late to catch him in the elevator.

 

It’s Red who helps carry Cloud’s unconscious body to Aerith’s old room, the only place that Aerith can think of to bring him: the room where she and her mother were kept.

 

When Tseng had brought her back here, it looked as though nothing had been moved or changed. As if it were a museum diorama—or a tomb.

 

It certainly wasn’t home.

 

“There are no guards on this level,” Red informs them, once they’ve laid Cloud on the bed and shut the door. He stretches himself out and lies down on the floor. “Very strange. And Hojo seemed to be in quite the hurry.”

 

“I’ll take whatever breaks we can get. After climbing all of them stairs and shit? I ain’t gonna look no gift chocobo in the mouth.” Barret huffs, sitting down gingerly on the couch. His eyes fall on the painted mural covering the wall.

 

Tifa, too, is gazing at the mural that young Aerith and her mother had painted, to take their minds off of their grey, lonely imprisonment. Patterns, landscapes, and portraits done by a skillful hand are intermingled with childish sketches. The mural stretches from wall to wall, a tableau of everything beautiful that Ifalna had told Aerith about: the sun and moon, sea and stars, mountains and valleys, snow and desert, humans and beasts in harmony, emerging from the nourishing green of the Lifestream. And at the center of it all, a little girl and her mother—everything done in vibrant colors.

 

Aerith steps closer and stands next to Tifa. “Do you like it?”

 

Tifa nods. “It’s beautiful. It…” She pauses.

 

“Yes?”

 

“You and your mother painted it, right?”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“I see.” Tifa smiles. “Makes sense. It looks like a lot of love was put into it.”

 

Aerith looks down at her boots.

 

If she loved me as much as this, wouldn’t she have tried harder to stay?

 

There are times when Aerith resents her mother for dying, for leaving her.

 

She told me she’ll in the Lifestream, she’s not truly gone, but… We were supposed to go on a big adventure together.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.” Tifa motions towards the mural. “I mean, I’m no artist, but to me…it’s just too bright and vivacious to not be a work of love. Especially in a place like this.”

 

Tifa looks so sure when she says that.

 

“My mom mixed all of the paints herself to get some of these colors.” Aerith nods at the dashes of paint done by a child’s unsophisticated hand: stumpy-legged deer, rabbits that looked like cotton balls, and yellow blobs that little Aerith intended to be chocobos. “Whatever color I asked for—even if I didn’t know what color something was supposed to be—she would do her best to make it for me. I think maybe she wanted to give me a glimpse of what she couldn’t bring me to see for myself.”

 

Tifa turns to look at her. “And when you were out in the world, did the colors meet your expectations?”

 

“I want to say yes. The flowers certainly helped. It’s why I love them so much. But honestly…I don’t know. I still haven’t seen all that much of the world,” Aerith replies. “I’ve never left Midgar.”

 

Barret grunted. “You might wanna prepare yourself for that possibility. Your mama asked us to take you away from here. You won’t be safe in Midgar no more.”

 

Aerith flinches.

 

If she leaves Midgar, that means she’s leaving behind everything she’s ever known. Everything that’s become a part of her—the church with the flowers, the camaraderie of the Sector Five slums, her little family, her and her mother—she’ll have to shed all of that, and she doesn’t know what she’ll be without it.

 

She’ll be out there, alone. The future yawns open like a gaping maw.

 

 

Nay, child. Fear not. Thou knowest more than this.

 

But what? What do I know? You keep taking it away from me.

 

Not taken, but hidden. For good purpose.

 

 

“Aerith.” Tifa says her name and the questions on her tongue dissolve. “It won’t be safe for any of us either. So we’re leaving Midgar too—me, Cloud, Barret, and Red—you won’t be alone no matter where you go.”

 

“If you lack a destination, Aerith, my home is a haven for those who who seek purpose. You would be welcome there,” Red says—a very generous offer, given that they had formally met less than thirty minutes ago. “But first, we must find a way out of here.”

 

Tifa reaches into a pouch at her waist and pulls out an envelope. “Oh, by the way. Your mother—Elmyra—wanted us to give this to you.”

 

“Oh. Thanks.” Aerith takes the envelope.

 

She doesn’t open it. Just stares at her name in Elmyra’s angular handwriting on the front. Aerith doesn’t need to look at the contents to know what Elmyra had meant.

 

Elmyra is letting her go, but Aerith’s not ready to say goodbye.

 

She’s a Cetra. Isn’t it in her blood to travel the Planet? To guide and cultivate?

 

Why is she afraid of it?

 

Because my mother was imprisoned and killed simply because she was a Cetra.

 

Because I’m the only one left and I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

She clears her throat. “I’ll open it once we leave Midgar.” Only then, once they’re out of this city, her parting from the old Aerith will finally be real.

 

 

In the ensuing silence, everyone’s eyes turn towards the unconscious Cloud.

 

“Dunno what’s going on with him,” Barret mutters. “But his ass better wake up soon.”

 

“Hope so,” Tifa says, gnawing her bottom lip in a clear sign of worry.

 

“When he was in that room with Jenova,” Aerith says, “he called her Mother.”

 

 

The Calamity’s son. Thou knowest his name, child. That, we have not hidden from thee.

 

 

“That means, Sephiroth is behind this.”

 

Tifa tenses. “Sephiroth?”

 

“Sephiroth? That Sephiroth? Ain’t he dead?” Barret asks. “Then again, wouldn’t surprise me if that was just another lie from the Shinra mouthpieces.”

 

“I don’t think he’s alive,” Aerith says, “but he’s not gone. Cloud’s…mixed up in that, somehow.”

 

Aerith sees Tifa’s hand press against her chest, on a spot below her breasts. Something resonates within her.

 

 

Pain.

 

Blood. So much blood.

 

Cloud…?

 

Then nothing.

 

 

Aerith reaches out and grasps Tifa’s elbow, although she’s not sure whether it’s to comfort Tifa, or to ground herself after the sudden flash of—something else. Tifa looks at her, and Aerith sees fear.

 

A burning village.

 

A dead city built atop a fathomless lake.

 

Where is that?

 

 

Barret harrumphs and the vision blinks out. “Boy’s got some explaining to do when he wakes up, then.”

 

 

But when Cloud does wake up, he can’t explain what happened, and waves off everyone’s concerns. “We gotta go,” he says. “We’ll worry about it later.”

 

//

 

Aerith can’t hear anything in this damn helicopter. In Shinra helicopters, one could easily make themselves heard without a headset. Wherever AVALANCHE HQ had gotten this one, they must’ve salvaged it from some junkyard.

 

She doesn’t want to think too uncharitably of it—after all, AVALANCHE HQ didn’t have to provide a chopper to extract them from the Shinra building. But they did.

 

 

It seems that Mayor Domino is sympathetic to the anti-Shinra cause, and with his support, AVALANCHE HQ had been mobilized to storm the building in order to avenge Sector Seven—their target being President Shinra himself. Among them had been Wedge, who had convinced AVALANCHE HQ to send a helicopter to extract them, and even had Mayor Domino patch him through to Aerith’s room to give them the good news. “Get to the roof, okay?” Wedge had said, and gave them a thumbs up.

 

“He shouldn’t be out of bed,” Barret had commented gruffly. “I’ll have to give him a piece of my mind when I see him next!”

 

The ascent to the rooftop was disturbingly quiet. While Hojo had left behind several of his “lab experiments” for the group to deal with on their way to the rooftop, he himself was nowhere to be seen or heard. Everyone in the group had been on their toes, half expecting his nasty voice to suddenly boom over the loudspeaker, gloating at them as they ascended the rest of the building.

 

In order to access the rooftop, they had to go through President Shinra’s office—but the uphill battle with security that they were expecting had not been forthcoming, and the large double doors to the luxurious office were wide open.

 

On the floor was a trail of something that looked like blood—but darker, and oddly fluorescent. The trail led into the president’s office. When they entered, they had found President Shinra on the floor in front of his desk, a long sword plunged through his chest and a pool of blood soaking into the expensive rug beneath him.

 

Even under the cold light of the lamps, Aerith saw Tifa blanch at the sight.

 

Cloud had said, “That’s Sephiroth’s sword!”

 

“Shit,” Barret had muttered, and while Aerith knew that Barret hated President Shinra with all his heart, even he seemed shaken.

 

“We have to get out of here,” Tifa urged. They ran out onto the balcony and up a flight of stairs to the rooftop, Beneath their feet, the trail of dark liquid continued, as if guiding their path.

 

When they reached the rooftop, an unmarked helicopter had been circling the roof, waiting for them.

 

 

 

 

The pilot’s name is Matt—at least Aerith thinks that’s his name, because it really is too damn loud in the helicopter and the doors are open, letting all the wind in, because Barret and Cloud want to keep a look out for any pursuers. Matt is an older gentleman, with close cropped hair where he isn’t already bald.

 

“He says he’s going to drop us off just outside the toll gate,” Cloud says. Good for him and his super SOLDIER hearing.

 

Matt veers the helicopter away from the Shinra building, over the plate—in the distance, Sector Seven is still burning in a few isolated spots—and towards the expressway. Aerith clings to Tifa’s hand inside the slightly crowded cabin and looks down at the city she called home.

 

All too soon, the helicopter touches down beyond the toll gate—right outside the borders of Midgar. It must be the early hours of the morning right now; how many more hours until daybreak?

 

 

“He is waiting for you,” Matt tells Cloud as the group disembarks, his face a blank, even though his eyes linger on Cloud for a disturbingly long time.

 

“What do you mean?” Cloud demands.

 

“And why ain’t nobody at the toll gate?” Barret wonders.

 

“Because he wants you alone,” Matt says, and hops out of the helicopter. His eyes flash a serpentine green and his face contorts into an unnatural sneer.

 

Aerith gasps as an inky black aura rises from Matt’s shoulders, and then transforms into a maelstrom of hooded black specters.

 

“Everyone get back!” Red shouts, and everyone complies—except for Cloud. Tifa lunges for him just as the whirlwind of phantoms fling themselves outward and swarm the party with a gale that knocks everyone off their feet. With loud, terrifying screams—o child, canst thou not hear our anguish?—the specters surround the whole group in a vortex that seems to reach up all the way to the sky.

 

Aerith herself nearly gets blown over, but Barret catches her. “What the hell are these things?” he yells, pulling Aerith back to her feet.

 

“Destiny,” Aerith answers, though she’s not sure where that answer even came from. It’s just a feeling.

 

Suddenly, the black specters suddenly vanish in puffs of smoke. In front of them, Cloud is hunched over the ground; Tifa holding on to him. Cloud pushes himself to his feet, and Tifa follows.

 

In Matt’s place stands a much taller man with long silver hair, a long sword, and one black wing extending from his back.

 

“No,” Aerith whispers. Tifa immediately assumes a fighting stance and Cloud’s hands go for his sword.

 

The cycle is restarting anew.

 

Thy enemy is here, child. He hath pursued thee here!

 

Sephiroth smirks. The ground begins to shake violently. He raises his arm, and the helicopter they’d just been riding in ascends into the air—and he ascends along with it.

 

“Damn it!” Red growls. “He’s going to bring it down on them!”

 

Sephiroth flings his arm downward, and the fuselage of the helicopter, rotors still whirring, plummets towards earth.

 

Right in the direction of Cloud, and Tifa.

Notes:

Yes, that Matt from Ever Crisis. I don’t know anything about the Young Sephiroth storyline except the names of his 3 SOLDIER comrades, but since Rebirth suggests that Jenova/Sephiroth is using Glenn (or his face at least) to manipulate events, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched for Jenova/Sephiroth to use Matt and Lucia in the same way.

Anyway, we won’t encounter Rufus in the story until Junon.

Chapter 9: Tifa V

Cloud’s sword cuts clean through the falling helicopter, as if it were tissue paper. Two large pieces of fuselage fall to either side with loud crashes, leaving him and Tifa relatively unharmed. Sephiroth is looking down at them from where he’s floating in the sky, smirking. An eerie purple glow shot through with red sparks lights up their surroundings, casting all of it in dim, unnatural light.

 

The anger that has fueled Tifa between the burning of Nibelheim and joining AVALANCHE now burns hotter than it has for a while, when she sees Sephiroth’s smug expression in front of her.

 

How dare he come back? If he was dead, why does he, of all people, get the privilege of returning from the dead, and with supernatural powers at his beck and call?

 

He murdered her father, her entire village! He deserved to die and stay dead!

 

It isn’t fair, Tifa wants to scream. The materia in her gloves respond to her fury, flaring to life in sapphire and emerald and ruby. It isn’t fair! He’s come back, he always keeps coming back, but why can’t the others?

 

Why not Mom, or Dad?

 

Why not Jessie and Biggs?

 

Why not Aerith…?

 

“Tifa!” Aerith shouts, as she, Barret, and Red run up and join them. Aerith is carrying the staff they’d found stashed in her old room at Shinra headquarters, while Barret’s gun arm is up and Red has his teeth bared, ready to pounce. Tifa blinks.

 

You’re here…?

 

“Yes, I’m here,” Aerith says, as if answering Tifa’s unspoken question. She, however, is glaring intently up at Sephiroth. Her words seem to be directed at him. “That’s right. Thought I’d give up? You haven’t won yet!”

 

The ground trembles violently beneath them as Sephiroth waves his hand again, like an orchestra conductor, and the asphalt under their feet begins to fracture and split into chunks. “Watch out!” Red exclaims, as the chunk of roadway that he and Barret are standing on splits off, and begins falling upward, as if gravity had turned itself inside out. Tifa grabs Aerith’s hand, and tries to reach for Cloud.

 

She can’t reach him, because Cloud is being borne aloft on another chunk of concrete and torn rebar, pulled by an invisible force towards Sephiroth. “Cloud! No!”

 

“Tifa, look out!”

 

There is a loud clang of metal, and Aerith yelps as her body slams into Tifa, sending them tumbling to the asphalt.

 

Flat on her back, Tifa looks over Aerith’s shoulder. Above them looms an enormous phantom in what appears to be a suit of elaborate black armor, with one arm in the form of a sharpened club and the other with a gigantic clawed hand.

 

Aerith is breathing raggedly against Tifa’s neck, between gritted teeth. She’s in pain—and that’s when Tifa realizes what happened. Aerith had blocked a blow for her, and suddenly her rage turns away from Sephiroth and towards herself.

 

God damn it, she’s so stupid.

 

Get it together, Tifa!

 

“Aerith, I’m sorry,” she says frantically, the Cure materia activating as she carefully presses her hands against Aerith’s upper back, then quickly shifts them so that she is now between Aerith and the strange threatening creature in front of them. Tifa flexes her fists, making sure that Aerith is behind her. She can’t make this kind of mistake again. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

 

“Stop saying that. It’s just a knock,” Aerith mumbles, using her staff to prop herself up.

 

“But I…”

 

“All I did was parry the thing. Gimme an ether, I’ll be fine.”

 

Tifa hands Aerith an ether and a potion (just in case), then turns and assumes a fighting stance. The giant armored phantom floats above them, swinging its club arm at Tifa as colored light begins to pulse through the seams of its armor.

 

Quick as a hare, Tifa evades, bobs to the outside and leaps into the air, delivering a spinning kick to the club arm in the same direction, using its momentum to throw the phantom off balance. It totters wildly to the side, and a blast of whatever magic spell it casted goes off course.

 

Undaunted, the phantom rights itself and rears back to deal another magic-enhanced blow, which catches Tifa in mid-flip and she stumbles to her knees.

 

The phantom gestures at her, and Tifa gasps as strange visions suddenly fill her eyes.

 

Pale hands folded in death, a body laid to rest in a lake.

 

Despair.

 

An enormous, fiery object falling from space and slamming into the earth.

 

The Planet, crushed in fire.

 

This can’t be our future.

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

“Aerith! No!”

 

Tifa wrenches her eyes open to see two Blizzagas hit the phantom, and it staggers, folding in over itself.

 

“I’m coming!”

 

Aerith’s voice rings out strongly. Tifa does a backwards roll to her feet.

The sudden surge of anguish that had come from somewhere deep within her dissolves at the sound of Aerith’s voice.

 

She looks over at Aerith, and sees her standing in a conjured magic ward that encircles her like petals on a flower. Aerith is holding her staff aloft, expression stern, as her entire figure glows in the phosphorence of her magic. Tifa had seen Aerith do stuff like this in Sector Six, but now, with Tifa’s knowledge of Aerith’s heritage, Aerith somehow looks even more otherworldly to Tifa than before.

 

Another wave of her staff, and a new ward circle blooms beneath Tifa’s feet—the glowing face of a chronometer.

 

Being in the ward does something to Tifa, because she feels her chi leap within her, a raging river.

 

“When it gets in close, hit it again,” Aerith yells, and Tifa leaps straight up into the air, meeting the giant phantom as it regains its bearings and charges at Tifa.

 

The world around Tifa seems to slow to a crawl as the phantom enters the ward and meets her fist. Her chi bubbles hot, and it sings as she darts in and out of the phantom’s reach, pounding it with punches and kicks as her lightning materia sparks with every blow.

 

“That’ll do,” Aerith calls, as the phantom totters and collapses from Tifa’s onslaught; it spasms and claws at the crumbling chunk of asphalt they’re occupying. “Stand back!”

 

Tifa jumps backwards. Aerith points her staff at the sky. Lightning bolts—too numerous and too loosely clustered to be Thundaga—come crashing down from the sky, circling the armored phantom and closing in on it.

 

The phantom seizes, and then crumbles to bits of luminous dust. An eerie quiet settles around them, and the smell of ozone is intense.

 

Aerith dismisses the wards, and sags heavily against her staff.  Tifa hurries to Aerith’s side. “Aerith!”

 

“Another ether,” Aerith grumbles. Tifa fishes the tiny bottle out and Aerith practically one shots it. “Ugh. Thanks.”

 

“Are you sure that’s enough?”

 

“Yeah.” Aerith turns to look Tifa directly in the eyes. “What did you see, earlier?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“The visions.” Aerith’s mouth quirks. “I know you saw something. That—creature—showed you something.”

 

“I…” Tifa’s gaze drops to Aerith’s hands.

 

The bangles. She saw them, the same bangles, catching the pale light filtering into a watery grave.

 

Aerith, no. Please wake up, please!

 

If you die, the Planet dies.

 

“I think…I saw the future. The end of everything.”

 

Aerith shakes her head. “The phantom we fought—I could tell that it was corrupted. Remember this. The future is always a blank page. Even if the same story ends up being written, it’s still up to us to write it.”

 

Suddenly, a hole opens up in the thick, swirling darkness surrounding them, letting in a circle of bright, cold light. It illuminates the surroundings, and Tifa sees the wreckage of a city—Midgar itself—floating all around them.

 

It’s surreal beyond words.

 

“Hey!” Barret’s voice booms. Tifa turns around and sees Barret and Red running towards them, looking mostly unharmed. “There you two are! Did you have to fight them Harbinger things too?”

 

“Harbinger?” Tifa asks.

 

“That’s what Red said they were called. Said they were corrupted to alter the future to Sephiroth’s liking, but we shut ‘em down quick, didn’t we!”

 

“Did you see Cloud?”

 

As if summoned by name, Cloud walks into Tifa’s line of sight, hand on his sword.

 

“What is this?” he asks Aerith. “Where is this?”

 

Aerith pauses, and then shakes her head again.

 

Cloud abruptly turns around and pulls out his sword. He looks up at the white hole in the sky—where a familiar silhouette floats. Tifa clenches her fists.

 

“Him again!” Barret exclaims. “The hell’s his problem!”

 

Sephiroth waves his hand once more. Debris spins through the air—trains, buildings, roads, and bridges—and hover menacingly above them. “He’s going to throw wreckage at us again!” Red warns. “Run!”

 

His warning comes just as Sephiroth sends a tide of Midgar’s ruins hurtling towards them. They all turn to run.

 

All of them, except Aerith. The wave of debris bears down on her solitary figure.

 

Horrified, Tifa stops in her tracks. “No!”

 

Then Aerith raises her staff; a bright fulmination of fire and ice bursts outwards, shattering all of the onrushing wreckage into dust particles on the wind and leaving Aerith unharmed.

 

Barret hoots. “That’s our girl!”

 

Sephiroth looks down silently at Aerith, who points her staff towards him. Her braid is aloft in the wind, but everything is quiet, as if the world were holding its breath.

 

“You. You’re wrong,” she declares, voice clear and steady. “You’re not who you think you are. But I know who I am. And I know what I have to do. You can’t take that away from me.”

 

Sephiroth looks away from her, as if bored, and pins his gaze on Cloud instead. Not only is he a murderer, he also has no damn manners. Not anymore, anyway. He brandishes his sword with a silky smile. “Come, Cloud, let’s see if you can finish what you started. I’m waiting,” Sephiroth purrs, and turns his back.

 

Cloud snarls soundlessly.

 

“Wait! Don’t—” Tifa begins, but Cloud lets out a yell and leaps into the air after Sephiroth, his sword swinging.

 

The sky above them suddenly bursts into dawn, as if a blackout curtain has been pulled back from the heavens. Tifa slams her eyes shut at the sudden, dazzling shift of light.

 

 

 

When Tifa opens her eyes again, the Midgar Expressway—or whatever crumbling, disjointed dimension that Sephiroth had apparently pulled them to—is nowhere to be seen. It’s all gone, as is Sephiroth himself.

 

Cloud stands before them, looking around wildly with his sword still drawn, but all there is to be seen is an intact Midgar, looming in the distance.

Notes:

Me: I hate writing action!!

Also me: writes another action chapter

Anyway, at least we made it to the end of the Remake.

Chapter 10: Tifa VI

“Did you get him?” Barret asks.

 

They are standing on an empty backroad in the badlands just outside of Midgar; from what Tifa can see, the road runs almost parallel to the main highway between Midgar and Kalm. Aerith’s hand is gripping Tifa’s arm—she’s looking up apprehensively at the sky, where rain clouds are beginning to form, colored pink by the rising sun.

 

Speaking of clouds—

 

“He got away,” Cloud says. His brows are furrowed in a mix of frustration and confusion. “Not before he pulled me to some place he called the edge of creation, and told me that the world would end. But that he would never end. Said he was going to change destiny.”

 

“Is it really him?” Tifa asks. “He’s really back?”

 

Cloud shrugs, mouth set in a straight line. “He felt real enough.”

 

“So…what now?”

 

He shakes his head. “Sephiroth. He’s still out there. I have to go after him. He destroyed our hometown. Whatever his plans are…he doesn’t care if people die. He doesn’t care who gets in his way.”

 

“I gotta know what his deal is,” Barret wonders.

 

“He’s a danger to the Planet,” Aerith speaks up, her eyes still fixed on the sky. “He’ll tell you all this stuff about defying destiny, like he’s going to save the Planet. No. What he really means is that he’s going to save it by destroying everything; he sees it as a cleansing. Right now, there’s no greater threat to the Planet than him.”

 

She looks over at Cloud, like she wants to ask him something, but whatever she wants to say dies in her throat as raindrops begin to fall.

 

As if mesmerized, Aerith holds a hand out to feel the drops hitting her skin. Tifa realizes that, after escaping Shinra the first time, Aerith has lived below plate all her life—she’s never been caught in the rain before.

 

“Ah, shit,” Barret grumbles. “Well, with you being an Ancient and all, I ain’t gonna ask how you know that.”

 

“They called themselves the Cetra,” Red corrects. “It may be a word in the general lexicon now, but to them, ‘Ancient’ was a pejorative as it was a name given them by their enemies.”

 

“That so? Well, I’ll be damned.” Barret turns to Aerith. “I saw what you did back there, facing off against Sephiroth. He may have done all of us a favor by offing President Shithead—but if you say he’s the real danger to the Planet, then it’s AVALANCHE’s duty to stop him.” He points at Cloud. “Guess we’re going your way, SOLDIER boy.”

 

//

 

The rain is very light—not much more than a sprinkle, so that the drops evaporate as soon as they hit the ground. Even so, it keeps up for a few more hours as they continue walking in the direction of Kalm.

 

All things considered, it could be worse. The days have been getting warmer with the approach of summer; a little drizzle is nothing compared to the sun beating down on them.

 

Barret leads the way, and Cloud takes the rear. Tifa walks next to Aerith, with Red on Aerith’s other side. They exchange small talk to pass the time. Tifa learns that Red is from Cosmo Canyon, the home of planetology. He states his intention to accompany them, out of gratitude for helping him escape.

 

Just as the rain peters off and gives way to late morning sunshine, they come across a small gully, where the shale is riddled with bullet holes. The ground, too, is pitted with rills. In the clay, large tire tracks have left imprints.

 

“Something happened here,” Barret mutters.

 

“And recently, given that the tire tracks have not yet eroded,” Red observes. He sniffs the air. “I surmise that rain has washed away most of the olfactory evidence.”

 

Cloud abruptly brings a hand to his head.

 

Aerith makes a tormented little noise in the back of her throat. Not quite a gasp, nor loud enough to be a moan. It’s so low, so soft, that if Tifa hadn’t been standing as close as she was, she wouldn’t have heard it. Tifa is worried.

 

“Let’s keep moving,” Cloud says, shaking his head and marching onward. “We can’t stay here.”

 

However, Aerith doesn’t move immediately—she pauses, looking briefly like she wants to cry, then bows her head towards the bullet-riddled headwall and folds her hands in silent prayer.

 

When Aerith opens her eyes, her hand reaches back briefly to the ribbon tied at the top of her braid. She says nothing as she follows Barret, but Tifa can see that Aerith’s earlier apprehension has now changed to deep unhappiness; the sight gives Tifa the urge to stay close to her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

There is a long silence.

 

Tifa resigns herself to Aerith not answering, but suddenly, Aerith says, “I miss it.”

 

“What do you miss?”

 

“The steel sky,” Aerith murmurs. She squints up at the rolling clouds above them. “Out here, the sky is…limitless.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Here, the sky is like…looking into an abyss, knowing that if you fall in, you’ll keep falling forever.” Aerith shakes her head. “I probably sound so dumb. Like, this is what my mom and Z—what my mom wanted for me to see. She didn’t escape Shinra just so I could hide under the plate for the rest of my life. Right?”

 

Tifa had grown up underneath this very sky—while she had eventually grown used to living under Midgar’s plate, walking like this beneath the open sky again makes her feel like something has finally been given back to her, after all the things she’s lost. Or like a long lost friend, welcoming her back after years in exile.

 

She knows that she’ll never really understand Aerith’s fear, but still—if she can help Aerith to see it the way it does, maybe it will help. “You’re not dumb,” Tifa reassures. “It’s just new to you. Once you become more familiar with it, you’ll be able to see it the way I do.”

 

“And how do you see it?”

 

“Well…” Tifa thinks back to blue skies and starry nights over Nibelheim. At some point, the sky had become her teacher, in a sense—part of her mountain guide training had been learning the signs of inclement weather, and how the movements of the sun, moon, and stars showed the passing of the seasons, and guided travelers on their way.

 

This knowledge, particularly of the night sky, had been cut off from Tifa in Midgar by the plate and the constant smog—but now that she’s left, a part of Tifa can’t wait for night to fall. If it stays this clear, she’ll finally be able to see the stars again.

 

“The sky might be strange to you now, but all you need to do is get to know it a little better,” she says to Aerith. “I can show you.”

 

“Will you?” Aerith asks. Her eyes turn towards Tifa, the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

 

“Of course, if you like.”

 

“I like.” Aerith winds their arms together, her lips stretching in the playful grin that Tifa feels like she hasn’t seen in years (although the sewers were only a few days ago). Her melancholy has seemingly fled for the moment; Tifa counts this as a win. Small, but sure.

 

In her mind, Tifa can’t help picturing the two of them somewhere, maybe out in an open field, or on a rooftop in a place that isn’t so polluted with smog and light. There she’ll show Aerith the constellations in the order she learned them, beginning with the seven stars of the Reindeer. The Reindeer is visible all year round, even as far south as Cosmo Canyon, if she remembers her lessons correctly—so it’s an easy constellation to start with.

 

//

 

Despite Barret’s confidence, walking all the way to Kalm is too big of an order for the group—especially since the day has grown hot and none of them have had any actual sleep the night before. At least their luck is holding up well: sometime in the early afternoon, they manage to flag down a truck. The driver, a elderly chocobo rancher named Bill, agrees to give them a lift to Kalm, though Barret is displeased with the chocobo squawking in his ear.

 

It’s nearly dusk when Bill drops them off at the outskirts of Kalm. “If you’re heading Junon way, feel free to come and swing by my ranch,” Bill says. “My grandkids and I, we’d be glad to have you.”

 

“That was nice of him,” Aerith chirps, when Bill drives off. Her mood is clearly much better than it was when they first left Midgar. “I didn’t know hitchhiking was a thing you could do! People are so much nicer out here than in the slums!”

 

“Not all of them,” Cloud says drily. “Better to keep your guard up. Shinra’s probably been working on our wanted posters since last night; there’ll be a bounty on our heads sooner rather than later.”

 

“And I’m sure Mr. Bill only meant to extend the invite to his ranch for you two ‘lovely ladies’,” Red adds.

 

None of this seems to dampen Aerith’s mood. “I bet the reward they’re asking for me is bigger than all of yours combined,” Aerith boasts. Maybe the expectation of shelter at the town is keeping her spirits high. Or maybe she’s excited, finally having realized the enormity of having escaped Midgar, to see the world her mother, and her ancestors before her, had seen.

 

“Nobody’s going to get any damn reward for us if we can help it, now let’s go before it gets dark,” Barret grumbles.

 

//

 

The town of Kalm, sitting atop a rocky bluff east of Midgar, looks like it came straight out of a fairytale. With a grand clock tower as its centerpiece, the architecture resembles that of the castles in the picture books that Tifa would read to Marlene.

 

Despite their status as fugitives, nobody pays any attention to four people and a leonine quadruped walking through Kalm’s front gate right at sunset. They don’t even seem to notice Cloud’s big sword or Barret’s gun prosthetic—as if the residents were so far removed from violence that they couldn’t even recognize a weapon if they saw one.

 

A few polite inquiries of a friendly-looking shopkeeper point the group in the direction of the Inn at Kalm, in the town square— “Local family business, been here for decades, best accommodations the town has to offer. It’s right across from the mako tank, can’t miss it.”

 

“Can we afford it, though?” Barret wonders as they walk up to the door.

 

“I sure hope so.” They couldn’t have pickpocketed all those troopers on their way up the collapsed plate for nothing. Some of them had pretty fat wallets, probably planning to blow it all on a night out in Midgar (after finishing a shift of mopping up terrorists, of course).

 

“Now that you mention it.” Aerith holds up a fine leather wallet. “Red snagged this from President Shinra’s pocket when we were escaping the building through his office.” She grins. “Who would’ve guessed that a guy as rich as him still carried a lot of cash.”

 

Tifa’s eyes widen and Barret booms with laughter.

 

//

 

Once again, Tifa swears that she will never take the blessing of a shower for granted. Washing off the dust and grime of the past day almost makes up for the lost sleep.

 

Which is a good thing, because sleep will have to wait a little longer. Barret has asked Cloud to tell him what he knows about Sephiroth—about how he went from Shinra’s war hero to a megalomaniac who wants to destroy the Planet. Not only that, Barret wants everyone to sit in and hear it.

 

Oddly, Cloud asks Tifa for permission first. She grants it, because honestly, she’s curious—how in the world did Cloud, whom she’d not heard from ever since he left  Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, draw Sephiroth’s particular attention?

 

And it only becomes more confusing. The very beginning of Cloud’s story already sounds implausible—because Cloud starts his tale claiming he had been sent to Nibelheim with Sephiroth five years ago.

 

I was in trouble.

You were there. You kept your promise.

 

No. That can’t be. She’d wished for it, sure, even as she lay bleeding out inside that reactor, but…it hadn’t been like that. Tifa was there five years ago. If she ever forgot about it, the scar on her chest would always remind her that yes, she was there.

 

And that Cloud wasn’t.

Notes:

And we made it to Rebirth.

The stars in this fic match the stars in the real world, just with names that I made up. For example, the Reindeer is our Big Dipper.

EDIT: if you saw me making changes to the text to make this work, no you didn’t :)

Chapter 11: Aerith V

Aerith isn’t quite the optimist that people think she is. Given what she’s gone through, even with the moments of respite she’s been able to claw back now and then, she’s very much aware of how many things can go wrong, how much she has lost, and how much she still has yet to lose.

 

Zack.

 

If Aerith still had any hope left of him coming back, she doesn’t anymore. She knows without a doubt that her first love, her funny, darling blue-eyed boy, is dead.

 

When Barret had stopped to point out the bullet holes in the gully, Aerith hadn’t been listening to him. It had been the stones at Aerith’s feet that had called out to her, and told her what had happened there: how her blue-eyed boy had cut down a whole regiment of Shinra troopers before he finally fell, as full of bullet holes as the shale—and how his blood had washed away in the rain and soaked into the clay.

 

 

It was you. I felt you go, I felt you being pulled into the Lifestream—I knew it was you, but I didn’t want to believe it. Not even when I saw someone else carrying your sword that day in Sector One.

I tried to block it from my mind. I prayed that this memory would be taken from me like all these others.

 

 

But she can’t deny it anymore.

 

He’d almost made it back to her. He had been so close.

 

 

The only thing that kept Aerith from bursting into tears at the cruelty of it all, right then and there, and falling to her knees in the clay—the same clay that drank Zack’s blood—was her long, hard-earned experience of hiding what she truly felt.

 

Not that she was able to all conceal of it; Tifa, who has not left her side since the fight with the Harbinger, inevitably guessed that something was wrong. Her concern for Aerith is palpable, in the way she hovers close by and in the softness of her voice.

 

What really strikes Aerith is that Tifa’s concern doesn’t feel condescending or anything like that. Like it would be okay to tell Tifa that nothing is okay, because Tifa won’t think of it as a weakness to exploit. And if Aerith didn’t want to talk about it, Tifa’s politeness would prevent her from pressing the issue.

 

If she broke down into tears right at that moment, if she threw herself into Tifa’s arms and bawled like she wanted to, Tifa would catch her, would be oh-so-careful with her; just as she is with Cloud, and even Barret, for all of the boys’ posturing about being tough. Aerith knows this, through the connection they’d already formed in a somewhere and a somehow that Aerith can’t remember.

 

And in that somewhere somehow, she knows that she’s failed Tifa before.

 

No! That’s wrong! I didn’t fail her! When would I? I’d rather die.

 

Her eyes dart towards the spot where Tifa’s gunshot wound had been. There is no sign that it was ever there—no hint that a mere few days ago, blood was pouring out of a hole in her abdomen. No, Aerith hadn’t failed. Tifa is still very much alive.

 

She’s always so gentle with Aerith. Tifa is amazing; strong, beautiful, respectful, compassionate and selfless. And isn’t that a miracle in itself, as much of a miracle as the flowers in the church: that Midgar’s slums hadn’t turned Tifa into someone hard and jealous and cruel and grasping, or broken her into pieces, embittered and despairing?

 

Oh, she’s wonderful. From the moment they met, she’s never been anything less. How could Aerith bear to fail someone like her?

 

 

Child, thou hast regretted much; yea, for what thou didst to her, thy regrets are many. How much more does thy guilt weigh upon thee!

 

 

What?

 

It makes Aerith mad. She doesn’t know what the Planet is insinuating. But she does know that Tifa deserves better than Aerith’s regrets.

 

She’ll show those voices what for.

 

 

Aerith briefly lays aside her grief for another time. She knows she could cry and scream for Zack right at that moment and Tifa would never judge her—but she holds her tongue for now. It would distress Tifa.

 

When Tifa speaks, Aerith responds and smiles—and how easy it is, to smile when Tifa is there, with her solid warmth next to Aerith. A firm reassurance that everything will be okay, keeping Aerith from being blown away by the storm of her own hopelessness.

 

Tifa says that she will show Aerith the stars. Aerith has only them seen in books, photographs of little lights in the darkness.

 

I don’t know much about anything anymore, but something tells me that I’ve got a long journey ahead of me, and the path is dark.

 

Aerith clings tighter to Tifa’s arm as they walk.

 

Won’t you be my light, too?

 

 

//

 

 

Aerith hadn’t expected to be this annoyed with Cloud so soon into their “epic journey”, but she is, and she can’t help it.

 

Their first full night outside of Midgar had begun well. Aerith had been soaking up Tifa’s kind, gentle presence the entire afternoon—it seems like they have a thousand little secrets shared just between the two of them now—and the hitchhiking episode with Chocobo Bill had been very novel and charming. After all of that, Aerith had been starting to feel a bit better, like, genuinely better, and she’d started to see the fun in their situation. Her sadness would keep for another day. They’d had a good dinner at the inn; for all of Red’s complaints that he was not a dog (that looked like a lion), he had nothing to say when Aerith slipped sausages to him under the table. The locals spoke well of the establishment for good reason: the rooms were comfortable and the water hot—and best of all, this hospitality was paid for by the late President Shinra’s gil.

 

Then Cloud had to go and sour everything.

 

 

It had started going downhill pretty early into Cloud’s story about Sephiroth—he had some crazy (and troubling) digressions about him waltzing into Tifa’s house uninvited, pawing through her stuff, and making dismissive remarks about her in front of her martial arts master.

 

It is the total opposite of how she thought Cloud treated Tifa in general, especially given how well they worked together in battle. Would Tifa speak so dismissively of Cloud in front of strangers? Aerith doesn’t think so; Tifa actually has manners. If Tifa had learned her manners in Nibelheim, then clearly Cloud had skipped those lessons.

 

(Then again, what did she expect from a guy who regifted stuff from other girls? Sure, maybe he just lacks social skills and doesn’t know it’s poor form, but that somehow makes it worse. Especially when it comes to Tifa!)

 

 

Aerith had tried to salvage the rest of the evening, she really did (and no, she was not faking her stiff back). It almost worked; Barret said they should all turn in for the night, and when they returned to their room, Tifa offered to give her a back massage. Then she became extremely flustered when Aerith took off her jacket and asked Tifa to help unzip her dress.

 

It was all so funny. Tifa had blushed and stammered as Aerith patiently explained that she would benefit more from the massage if her skin was bare (at least, that’s how she hears Madam M does it).

 

“Only if you, uh, want to.”

 

“I want to.”

 

In the end, Aerith had gotten her massage (she only slipped the dress down enough to expose her back and left all her underwear on, otherwise Tifa would probably have exploded from embarrassment). It really hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt, the kind that makes one feel tingly and loose afterwards. Tifa’s hands and fingers are so strong; at times it felt like she could tear Aerith in half, but that knowledge had been more exciting than threatening. Tifa has such impressive control over her own strength that Aerith knows she is in no danger around her. The sensation of Tifa’s bare hands also helped immensely with the thrill—they are roughened from work and battle, but also incredibly warm, so much so that the knots in Aerith’s back had seemed to melt like butter beneath the heat of Tifa’s hands.

 

“I bet you’d give Madam M a run for her money,” Aerith had mumbled dreamily into the pillow as Tifa carefully zipped up the back of her dress.

 

(She’s so earnest and thorough in everything she does; Aerith likes it so much.)

 

“Heard the name, but I still don’t know who that is. Someone from Wall Market?”

 

“Yeah. She runs a fancy massage parlor in Wall Market.” Aerith has not patronized her establishment, but she has done business with her—as in, Aerith had to fill several orders for rose petals for Madam M’s establishment throughout the year, which had been a pain in the ass given how many roses she had to grow for their petals. “Her luxury course is three thousand gil. I’ve heard that people come out of there a different person once they’ve gotten it.”

 

“That’s nice, but I’m not the type to pay three thousand gil for that,” Tifa had said, as Aerith rolled over to face her. They had laughed, and everything seemed to have settled.

 

But then, shortly after they had gotten into bed, Tifa brought up Cloud, again. Aerith hadn’t been very interested in talking about Cloud, but Tifa had been so troubled that Aerith didn’t have the heart to say so.

 

Tifa spoke about how she was questioning her memories, because what Cloud had described in his story had been mostly accurate—what was worrying was that Tifa never saw him there in Nibelheim on that mission with Sephiroth, despite his claims. “According to his story, all those things that he says that he did and said…” Tifa had wrung her hands, looking so very lost. “It wasn’t him who did or said those things. In my memories…it was another SOLDIER First Class. His name was Zack.”

 

 

//

 

 

The night is all downhill from there. Aerith and Tifa wind up talking about Zack and what might have happened to him, after he disappeared off the face of the earth; Aerith begins crying because he was her first love and he’s dead, he died five years after his disappearance and there was no word on where he was in the interim. Tifa is anxious and distraught because she thinks that she put her foot in her mouth and made Aerith cry, which…yes she did, but also, it’s not really her fault. Tifa didn’t know who Zack was to Aerith.

 

In the end, Tifa gets out of bed and goes to talk privately with Cloud, apologizing profusely and saying that she should give Aerith her space.

 

 

While Aerith wipes her tears, which won’t fucking stop for some reason, she suddenly remembers the envelope her mom left for her. She supposes, now that she’s out of Midgar, that she ought to read it. If not now, then when?

 

 

Aerith opens the envelope. Its contents are a letter, and a bank card with “Junon Republic Bank” printed on it.

 

The letter is, as Aerith had expected, a goodbye letter. Elmyra must have penned this while Aerith was still in the Shinra building. The first few sentences explain the card: C’s father had money squirreled away under different names, her mother wrote. This account is untouched, as far I know. I don’t know if They are monitoring account activity, but if you can figure out how to access the funds without Them catching on, everything in it is yours to use.

 

“C”—Clay Gainsborough, the man who would have been Aerith’s adoptive father, had he lived. She knew a little about his family’s status in Midgar’s underworld, knew how people resented his family and their ill gotten wealth—mostly from the other Sector Five kids who would gossip about her to her face, when she’d first come to live with Elmyra. “They” being Shinra, who kept Elmyra under surveillance just as much as they did for Aerith.

 

The rest of the letter reads as follows:

 

Your mother’s last request was to take you somewhere safe. I like to think that I’ve done my best. But with all that’s happened since, I know now that Midgar is no longer that place. Maybe it never was.

You’ll be safer out there, away from Them. Be free, Aerith.

Thank you for filling an empty house and heart with your joy. You’ll always be my baby girl.

Love, Mom.

 

 

Aerith can’t help herself; she sobs and scrubs harder at her eyes.

 

 

Not even a full day out of Midgar and she’s already homesick. She misses the red-roofed house, the flowerbeds and the sound of water splashing in the moat. She misses her mom’s hugs, and even her scolding whenever Aerith snuck out or stayed out too late.

 

But her mom’s right. She can’t stay in Midgar anymore. Since she let Tseng take her in, he wasn’t just going to let her off the hook again.

 

She swallows her tears again, blows her nose, and miserably curls up in the bed.

 

No more of the red-roofed house she called home. No more sitting around the dining table with her mom, arranging flowers while Elmyra reads the paper.

 

(And no more Zack, either.)

 

A minute later, she hears the thumping of Cloud’s boots and the clank of his big sword, as well as Tifa’s voice outside the door. Despite herself, her ears prick up; Tifa is saying something, but the words don’t sound like anything Aerith recognizes.

 

Then it strikes her—Tifa’s speaking a different language.

 

Given where she and Cloud grew up, it’s probably Nibel; a language that held some interest for certain people that came through the labs when Aerith was little. These were professors from Midgar University, who were researching the civilization of the Ancients but had very little to go on, as the Ancients had all but disappeared.

 

They’d had special permission from President Shinra to access the labs because the President thought that their interviews with Ifalna would facilitate finding the Promised Land—Hojo had complained about having to allow “liberal arts majors” into his domain. (This was rich, coming from a man whose methods, aside from being sadistic, were so damn sloppy he may as well have gotten his degrees from a diploma mill!)

 

But Ifalna had told these scholars nothing of import; not that she’d told Aerith much more, either. She would not confirm their theory that, while the Ancients retained their own language for their own use, Old Nibel had been their favored language in antiquity to communicate with people outside their race—a theory Aerith only learned about when she was older, on one of those very dry talk radio stations Elmyra would put on in the background. Old Nibel had been a dead language for a long time, but its descendant, modern Nibel, was still spoken in the Nibel region—though it was said that the number of speakers was rapidly dwindling.

 

It seems that Tifa might be one of them.

 

As Aerith reflects on this, Tifa opens the door. There’s a hitch in her breathing that indicates distress—like, imminent weeping kind of distress—and it suggests that Cloud was the one to put his foot inside his mouth this time.

 

Aerith turns over in bed to see Tifa standing across the room with her head bowed and shoulders slumped, hands covering her face, like she’s forcing down her tears and sounds of sorrow. Whatever Cloud had said had cut Tifa deeply. Aerith’s own sadness is muffled by a rising annoyance at Cloud. She almost doesn’t care what he said. How dare he make Tifa cry. Guys making girls cry always makes Aerith mad.

 

“Tifa,” she murmurs. Tifa’s back is to her.

 

“Sorry. Sorry to wake you. I’m fine,” Tifa chokes out, and Aerith sits up.

 

“You’re not fine,” Aerith says.

 

“…no. I guess not. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Tifa still won’t look at her. “Please, Aerith. You need to sleep.”

 

“Only when you do.”

 

Tifa lets out a wet sigh. Slowly, she walks over to her own bed and strips off her boots, then lies down. She faces away from Aerith the entire time.

 

“I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Good night, Aerith.”

 

 

Not the damn ‘sorry’ again. It’s starting to grate on Aerith’s nerves—Tifa is clearly hurting and yet she’s acting like everything is her own fault.

 

Reluctantly, Aerith lies down again and closes her eyes, turning her back on Tifa. She can’t look at her right now, because…because she might—actually, she doesn’t know what she might do, but it would probably be something crazy. Like getting into bed with Tifa and knocking some damn sense into her. Or something.

 

Better to try to get some sleep instead.

Notes:

Now that the “mystery” of Zack’s whereabouts is solved, I think the Gongaga episode will be a lot less frustrating (for me, anyway) than it was in Rebirth.

No, I don’t actually think Cloud looked at Tifa’s underwear. Assuming it was actually part of Cloud’s story, it was Jenova imprinting a corrupted macho version of Zack’s confidence on him: “I’m SOLDIER First Class, I do what I want, watch me walk right into this girl’s house and steal her bra, wait till I tell the bros about this”, etc.

Also, peep me taking another potshot at Hojo’s professional status because…deserved.

On another note: as someone who preferred VIII and X over the original VII, I have to credit the remake trilogy for sparking my interest in VII (or at least an iteration of it). In the Nibelheim chapter, I saw ~something~ after Aerith’s comment in Rebirth, about how if she were Cloud, she would’ve been up on the water tower all the time—after Cloud more or less admitted he sat up there because he was hoping that Tifa would notice him and wave. That suggests that Aerith would’ve also been up there for the same reason, and it is pretty heavily implied in other media that younger Cloud had a huge crush on younger Tifa—like so huge he wanted to make SOLDIER to impress her. That was the moment that made me go “hmm, Aerith totally has a crush on Tifa, girl would be SAT on that water tower hoping Tifa would notice her”. And here we are. :)

Chapter 12: Aerith VI

When Aerith wakes up the next morning to sunlight streaming through the window, Tifa’s bed is empty. Tifa had even made the bed before she left—pillow fluffed, sheets straightened and tucked in—and if Aerith hadn’t known better, she might’ve thought that nobody had slept in that bed in the first place.

 

The sight is…disappointing.

 

“Tifa went out earlier,” Barret tells Aerith in the dining room when she comes down for the complimentary breakfast (thanks, President Shinra). Red is with him, eyeing the sausage patty on Barret’s plate. “Broden—that’s the innkeeper—he mentioned a bookstore. Tifa said she’d probably go check it out.”

 

Cloud is nowhere to be seen. Barret says, “SOLDIER boy is still asleep. Figured I’d let him sleep. How ‘bout you? You sleep okay?”

 

“Yeah, I think so.” Since she was able to sleep until after the sun came up, and she hadn’t woken up when Tifa left; that counts as a good sleep for her.

 

“Good. Consider this a day off,” Barret says. Despite his gruff tone, he smiles kindly at her.  “We had a real long day yesterday, and the day before that too. And I know you ain’t been out of Midgar, so you should go out and have a look around town. Small enough that you can’t get lost—it ain’t Midgar, that’s for sure. However, don’t go buying no souvenirs; we’re better off traveling light, you hear?”

 

Boo. “Yessir,” Aerith says.

 

At that moment, Red’s tongue darts out towards Barret’s plate. Barret pulls it back.  “Hell no! You stole my bed last night, I ain’t letting you steal my sausage either,” Barret snaps.

 

 

//

 

 

Despite being a small town, Kalm has lots to see. Shop vendors are opening up for the day and there are people streaming through the town gate, bringing their wares to market. Aerith really wants to rush here and there because there’s just so much to take in, but she tells herself to slow down and pace herself.

 

The difference between Kalm and Midgar is like night and day. Unlike Midgar, Kalm has a languid air about it—as though time moves slower here. Yet despite its laidback atmosphere, Kalm has a liveliness to it; it seems like there’s something going on in every corner. There’s a group of women taking their morning exercise, line dancing to the pop version of the Chocobo Song next to the canal; buskers playing instruments and singing; and restaurants and bars filling up with patrons both indoors and outdoors. And there are real flowers everywhere: pansies, dahlias and marigolds—all sorts of blooms, really—greet her from rows of planters and pots lining the cobbled streets and window sills, and there’s plentiful wisteria hanging overhead from pergolas shading the streets. Flowers are also being sold everywhere, alongside fresh produce at street stalls and wagons; these flowers cost up to fifty percent less than what Aerith would charge her topside customers. Seeing this is both fascinating, and humbling.

 

As Aerith walks the streets looking for the Maghnata Bookstore, she listens to the snippets of conversations going on around her. There are people talking about normal stuff: the weather, the economy, the fiend level danger. She also overhears a group of tourists talking about getting tickets to the clock tower, and how impressive the view is from up there. The tickets are free, but they only give out a limited number per day.

 

There’s also plenty of people talking about the recent events in Midgar; the reactions vary from disbelief, to fear and anxiety, indifference, and even grim relief from some Shinra office workers who were finally able to use their work leave, now that Sector Seven was in ruins and resources had been diverted away from their departments, leaving them with nothing to do at work.

 

Aerith crosses one of the stone bridges over the canal running through town, and spots the bookstore. However, Tifa isn’t at the bookstore when Aerith gets there.

 

Turning on the old flower seller charm, Aerith asks the employee at the counter if he’s seen someone of Tifa’s description.

 

“Oh, yes,” he says cheerfully. “Long dark hair, tied at the end like so? Lovely girl, real polite. She’s the kind of woman you see once and don’t easily forget. Yes, she was right over there, browsing the section where we keep the Way of the Fist volumes. A practicing martial artist, is she? Friend of yours?”

 

“Maybe,” Aerith says. “Was she here long?”

 

“About half an hour. She left maybe ten minutes ago.” The employee grins at her. “But while you’re here, can I interest you in anything? Got a folio you want to improve?”

 

Aerith holds back a sigh. If she wasn’t sure before, she’s got the hint now—Tifa doesn’t want to be found. Doesn’t mean she can’t try to find her, but Barret had also told Aerith to have her equipment checked and to make preparations for whatever might happen once they leave Kalm. “The radio has reported that fiends in the grasslands are becoming more common and more aggressive,” Red had told her, “so please consider it.”

 

She switches on her sunniest smile at the bookstore employee. “Yeah. Do you have volume one of the Telluric Scriptures?”

 

//

 

As Aerith walks out of the bookstore, it’s just about noontime. She sees Cloud heading towards her, marching up the steps to the bookstore, and she wonders if he’s also looking for Tifa.

 

Well, even if he is, he was obviously mean to Tifa last night, so Aerith doesn’t feel guilty about hatching a plot to throw him off the scent, and maybe give him a good scolding while she’s at it. “If you’ve got business with the bookstore, I won’t keep you, but do you want to go up to the clock tower with me later? I’ve heard it’s got a really great view from up there.”

 

Cloud looks surprised, but then he says, without even a hint of grumpiness, “Sure, let’s go,” and then it’s Aerith’s turn to be surprised.

 

“Really?” she exclaims. Then she quickly regains her composure. “Okay, since it was my idea, I’ll go get the tickets. Meet me at the clock tower when you’re ready!”

 

She’s just about to turn away when Cloud tries to say more to her, but she just throws a “I’ll talk to you later!” over her shoulder and dashes off.

 

In order to get to the clock tower, Aerith has to pass through Kalm’s open air market. The market is probably the busiest place in town at the moment. People are queuing up to purchase all manner of goods. There’s even more flowers, and more fresh produce—wagons and stalls laden with fruits and vegetables that most people in Midgar’s slums never see outside of a can or pouch. Butcher shops with sausages and fresh carcasses hanging from hooks. Stalls selling everything from potions and antidotes, to street food. Above the cacophony is the shouting of fishmongers, hawking their wares brought up from Junon. Aerith slows her steps and tries to breathe it all in, as she works her way through the crowded street.

 

This is life, comfortingly familiar in an unfamiliar place, and without the constant grime and hustle of the slums.

 

//

 

When Aerith gets to the clock tower, she finds out that tickets are still available when she finally gets there. She asks for two tickets, and then settles in to wait for Cloud; but she keeps an eye out for Tifa.

 

Tifa never shows up, which may or may not be a good thing because if Aerith did see her, she’d be this close to standing Cloud up and taking Tifa up to the tower instead, because if Tifa is avoiding her, it means she’s still upset about making Aerith upset, and it didn’t help that Cloud was mean to her. So maybe if she showed Tifa that there are no hard feelings, Tifa would feel better.

 

Eventually, Cloud appears, and for all of his apparent willingness to indulge her, Aerith still has to drag him up the stairs.

 

 

The view from the tower is just as everyone says it is—to the south, there is an expansive vista of green grasslands that stretch all the way to a formation of rocky peaks, which contain the world’s largest mythril deposit, according to the pamphlet that a docent had given her. Beyond those mountains is Junon and the Meridian Ocean. To the north is more ocean, and the smell of saltwater is stronger here, carried up by the breeze.

 

But more importantly to Aerith, she can see Midgar to the east. It looks awfully small from this distance, and she says so. Cloud murmurs something affirmatory, and then, after a beat, Aerith asks, “So…did something happen between you and Tifa?”

 

Surprise and embarrassment immediately flash through those blue green mako eyes before Cloud quickly turns away.

 

“Don’t look so surprised. We’re roommates, you know.”

 

“She say something?”

 

Aerith shakes her head. Tifa would never. “No, because she has manners. But I can tell.”

 

Cloud does droop a little when Aerith points out that Tifa is too well-mannered to speak poorly of Cloud in front of someone he doesn’t really know that well. He does look sorry, so instead of yelling at him as Aerith originally planned, she speaks kindly.

 

“I would’ve given anything to have a friend like her when I was growing up. Just…don’t take her for granted.”

 

Don’t choose a ghost over someone who’s still alive.

 

Aerith doesn’t get the chance to parse the abrupt, unbidden thought that nearly escapes her tongue, because at that moment, a pair of Gelnikas appear in the sky and descend upon Kalm, their turboprop engines roaring.

 

Shinra is here.

 

“They’re here for us, aren’t they,” Aerith mutters, and Cloud nods.

 

“Bet on it. Let’s get out of here.”

 

 

//

 

 

Broden, the innkeeper, meets them outside the tower and leads them back to the inn. He says he’s helping them, because he, too, has a grudge against Shinra, for the violence they brought to Kalm via the Wutai war and also the land grabbing that the company engaged in; he has a contact in AVALANCHE that told him that their group might be headed his way.

 

Aerith looks at him when he coughs, sees mako coloring in his eyes—was he SOLDIER? Or is it mako poisoning?—and through the deeper sight given her by the Planet, she can see the thread of his life fraying. He’s not well.

 

Broden indicates the entrance to the bomb shelter beneath the inn. “There is a way out of town through an underground tunnel here. Your friends are waiting for you below,” he says. “Mr. Wallace, Miss Lockhart, and the…quadruped. I advise you to head east; a friend of mine named Oliver has a farm out there, and he will gladly provide you assistance. Once things calm down here, I will forward the supplies that Miss Lockhart purchased for your journey to him.” He motions for them to go. “Now hurry!”

 

 

“Tifa’s been busy,” Aerith remarks, as Cloud leads her down into the bomb shelter.

 

“Yeah, she said it felt weird to not be doing anything when I talked to her earlier.”

 

Aerith frowns. “You talked to her today?” So Tifa got over whatever Cloud said to her? Then Aerith hadn’t needed to steer him away? And why couldn’t Aerith find her?

 

“Uh. Yeah.”

 

Annoyance creeps up on Aerith. So Tifa didn’t want or have the time to talk to Aerith?

 

 

Barret, Red, and Tifa are waiting for them further down the tunnel; Red’s nose has already found an air current indicating the exit.

 

“Where the hell have you two been?” Barret booms angrily, his tone sounding a lot like Elmyra whenever Aerith came home past midnight.

 

Tifa is standing just beyond him. She looks relieved to see them, but then her eyes land on Aerith, and she quickly looks away.

 

Oh no she didn’t. Nobody ignores Aerith against her will.

 

“We were on a date!” Aerith declares, and then there’s a gasp and a hiss as Tifa stumbles over Red’s tail.

 

Barret doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, that was the last one, you hear? At least until things calm down! Got that? Now let’s get the hell out of this tunnel.”

 

 

The group follows Red until they reach a pair of large metal doors. Disuse had caused them to stick shut, but a big push from Barret and Cloud forces them open.

 

Sunlight immediately streams directly into their faces, along with the smell of fresh air and grass. The verdant carpet of the grasslands rolls out beneath their feet, stretching to the east and south, as far as the eye can see.

 

Something within Aerith jumps for joy.

 

For a glorious moment, all of her accumulated irritations and worries and grief are swept away in a perfect storm of awe and wonder.

 

This is what Shinra had been keeping her from.  The mere act of walking the Planet in all of its glory—this is what she was meant to inherit from her mother, aside from the white materia. This is the Planet, of which her people had been chosen stewards.

 

“It may look like it is thriving,” Red says solemnly, “but in reality, it’s barely hanging on.”

 

Right, of course; Aerith still has a lot to learn about the Planet, being a Cetra, and what all of that even means. However, in this moment, she won’t let the reminder of their predicament disturb her excitement.

 

She takes one giant leap forward, and turns back to the others. “Are you coming?”

 

Aerith means it for all of them, of course, but her eyes seek Tifa’s only. The boys all nod at her, and make their way down the grassy slope.

 

Tifa looks back at her, and Aerith tilts her head, smiling brightly. She reaches her hands out to Tifa, and wiggles her fingers. “Well? Are you?”

 

Come on, Tifa, Aerith thinks.

 

Slowly, Tifa nods, and smiles back.

 

“Yeah.”

Notes:

I’m sorry that Tifa was only in this chapter for like five seconds. But I got all swept away writing about Kalm, because man that town sure is pretty.

Chapter 13: Aerith VII

The people in Kalm hadn’t been lying about the fiends becoming more common. As idyllic as the grasslands are, with its flower-filled meadows and babbling brooks, the group keeps coming across pockets of monsters with malicious intentions, not unlike their counterparts in Midgar.

 

Apparently, all it takes for Tifa’s distant attitude to blow over, is for her to beat the shit out of the various and sundry grasslands monsters. She even laughs a little when one of her showy backflip kicks sends a grasslands wolf flying right into Cloud’s sword.

 

Aerith sidles up to her after that particular fight and more or less leans right into Tifa’s space. “Everything okay now?” she says, directly into Tifa’s ear.

 

Tifa flinches. “Aerith!” she exclaims.

 

“I’m just saying, I was hoping that we could’ve spent some quality time together in Kalm this morning before Shinra chased us out. But I couldn’t find you, so I had to ask Cloud instead. Sure he’s pretty, but also kinda boring; I was talking at him like ninety percent of the time. Might as well have talked to a wall.” Aerith pouts at her and Tifa looks absolutely bewildered. “Did you think that I was mad at you or something?”

 

Tifa stammers. “Uh…”

 

“Because I’m not.” Aerith takes Tifa’s arm and tugs her along, following after the boys as they continue eastward towards Broden’s friend’s farm. Her voice lowers so that the boys can’t hear them. “I was actually really worried about you, y’know?”

 

“But…the whole thing about Zack…”

 

“That…” Aerith sighs. “I honestly think that I needed to hear that. Better than wondering if he cared so little about me that he just straight up ghosted me. If he had to leave me…I feel better thinking that it’s because it was out of his control.” Aerith looks up at the blue, blue sky. “That for all the time I spent missing him, at least I wasn’t being played for a fool. You, however, didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t know—how could you?”

 

Tifa bows her head. “Still, I’m sorry.”

 

“Sorry? Thought your name was Tifa.”

 

“Aerith…”

 

“I’m serious!” Aerith shakes Tifa’s arm. “I thought you were mad at Cloud because you came in crying last night. Then he tells me that you guys talked this morning and then I was like, why didn’t you talk to me? Even if I was mad at you, which I wasn’t by the way, I’d at least say good morning, and then tell you so. You should’ve waited for me. If you’re gonna be sorry, then just be sorry for that now!”

 

“Okay. I’m sor—”

 

“Don’t say it! I forgive you. Now that’s settled.” Aerith beams at her, and laces their fingers together. The leather of Tifa’s gloves is soft underneath Aerith’s palm.

 

Tifa smiles back meekly. “Um…thanks.”

 

There are worse things than walking hand in hand with a pretty girl among the flowers. And Tifa’s beautiful shoulders aren’t curling in on themselves anymore.

 

//

 

Broden’s farmer friend Oliver isn’t much in the way of help, but at least he’s apologetic about it. As much as they all resent Shinra out here, it wouldn’t be right to bring them down on these people’s heads.

 

He points them towards the wetlands, where there’s an abandoned ferry building dating back to the Republic of Junon. “Can’t do worse than take shelter there; I’m pretty sure Shinra’s even forgotten it existed. When your supplies from Kalm arrive, I’ll be sure to forward them to Bill’s ranch for y’all. His ranch is on the way to the wetlands; in fact, his property backs right up against the swamp. You can’t miss it.”

 

“Bill, as in Chocobo Bill?” Aerith asks.

 

Oliver nods. “The one and only! And speaking of the swamp, I should warn y’all: if you’re thinking of crossing the swamp as a shortcut to get to Junon, I wouldn’t recommend it. All the ferries across the water have been defunct for decades; you could take a chocobo through the water, but it’s very risky, because the Midgardsormr lives there.”

 

“The what lives there?” Barret asks.

 

“Miðgarðsormr,” Tifa and Cloud say at the same time.

 

Oliver tilts his head. “You folks speak Old Nibel?”

 

Aerith whirls on them. “You do?”

 

Tifa shakes her head. Cloud actually looks a bit sheepish. “No, just regular, modern Nibel, but…Cloud and I grew up hearing stories about Midgardsormen, and the stories kept the old name.” She glances at Cloud with a smirk. “So you were listening, all the way in the back.”

 

“I, uh…”

 

“The Midgardsormr. A very large serpent that supposedly encircles the earth, holding its tail in its mouth; when it lets go of its tail, that means the end of the world is nigh. One of the many tales of the Nibels and the old gods worshipped there,” Red says.

 

Oliver nods. “Someone must’ve named this beast after the one in the story. It’s a big snake all right, and this big old worm in the swamp is the reason why folks who go into the swamp, never come out again. If you want to get to Junon while avoiding Midgar, you would do better to loop around the mountains and approach Junon from the southeast, but that adds at least two days to the journey on chocobo.”

 

“What I’m hearing is that we have to rent chocobos if we want to get anywhere quick.”

 

“Sure. Bill can help you with that. His ranch is due south from here, about half and hour’s walk from here.”

 

 

On the way to Bill’s, the conversation among the group moves to money, because if they do end up renting chocobos, then money is something they need more of, and will need to part with; President Shinra’s unwitting posthumous generosity only goes so far. Barret wants to argue about the amount that Tifa spent on supplies, but Tifa refuses to budge. “I am telling you, Barret, we’re not broke, we just need to stretch the gil we do have. If we circle around the mountains, we’ll have to make camp, and that’s what the supplies are for. We can’t depend solely on the kindness of strangers, especially if we’re risking drawing Shinra’s attention to them.”

 

The way Tifa speaks with Barret is surprisingly authoritative for someone who’s mostly been—well, demure, and kind of meek, in front of Aerith. Cloud backs Tifa up in that money-grubbing mercenary sort of way he has: “We can probably make more money by charging people around here for killing fiends and selling their parts,” he says. “Bones and talons and tusks, people use them to make armor, protective charms and stuff. And if they drop gil and items like they do in Midgar, that can’t hurt either.”

 

From then on, Barret mostly keeps his complaints to himself after being double-teamed like that. “Good for Cloud, taking your side,” Aerith murmurs to Tifa.

 

“He’s not a bad guy underneath all of that spiky hair,” Tifa says. “Sure, he ignored me more often than not when we were kids, but he was never outright mean to me.”

 

“It was kinda mean of him to go into your room without asking,” Aerith says.

 

“That’s another thing that bothered me about his Nibelheim story,” Tifa says, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Her voice lowers, so that Aerith has to lean in to hear her. “He rarely came by my house when we were growing up. Our moms were friends, so he did when we were really little, but…we got older and he stopped coming. And my dad didn’t like him. So I didn’t think that just walking into my house was something he would do.”

 

“Of course your dad didn’t like him,” Aerith sniffs. “Protective parents are the same everywhere. My mom had this look on her face when I, uh, told her about Zack. I didn’t even say that much and she still looked like she ate something sour.”

 

“Aerith, it wasn’t like that,” Tifa says, but at least she stops gnawing through her lip. It would be a pity if she injured it; it’s too pretty. “Anyway…I know that people change. I should probably be better at accepting that.”

 

“Does that mean you think that his story isn’t totally…out there?”

 

“I don’t know.” Tifa shakes her head. “Remember what you said back in the sewers, about getting this feeling like…something’s happened before, but you just can’t remember it? I think…maybe stuff did happen closer to the way he tells it, because a lot of it did happen, he just wasn’t there, in my memories. And I’m no longer sure of my memory.” She shrugs, a grim little smile on her lips. “Traumatic experiences will do that to you.”

 

“For what it’s worth…” Aerith squeezes her hand. “If you say something happened, or didn’t happen, I’d believe it.”

 

“You would?”

 

“You haven’t given me a reason not to. Not yet, anyway.”

 

Tifa looks thoughtful as she says, “I’ll try not to, then.” She looks at Cloud’s back. “I feel like too much is riding on this for me to be getting it wrong.”

 

 

 

When they reach Bill’s ranch, they are greeted warmly by the man himself. Unlike Oliver, Bill is very confident in his birds’ ability to traverse the swamp while avoiding the Midgardsormr.

 

Aside from the Midgardsormr, there is another problem: according to Billy, Bill’s grandson, all of their healthy birds are currently rented out, and they have to wait until they return. “The only one that’s rider ready and isn’t spoken for—Piko—he’s run off and hasn’t returned. But if you folks can round him up and bring him back, you’re welcome to him.”

 

While that is a setback for sure, there is a silver lining: one of Oliver’s farmhands comes to the ranch with their supplies, and informs them that Shinra’s search party has withdrawn from Kalm entirely, and it should be safe for them to return to Kalm if they wanted. Billy says, “If you don’t have enough money to rent birds, there’s  folks who need help and are willing to pay. They post their help wanted ads on the town message board in Kalm, and you can make more money by answering those ads.” Billy looks thoughtful. “In fact, my sister Chloe might have something for you; but she won’t tell me what it is. And, uh,” Billy adds, “there’s this kid with white hair and a backpack out next to the old Republic remnawave tower on the other side of the property. He came up here saying that he was looking for someone with blond hair and a big sword.” Billy looks pointedly at Cloud, which makes everyone else look at him.

 

“Chadley,” Cloud muttered.

 

“Oh, so you do know him,” Billy says, relieved. Everyone else just shakes their heads behind Cloud’s back.

Notes:

Chadley the #1 deus ex machina (not counting the Whispers lmao)!!

This chapter is shorter, because it technically is a coda to the previous chapter.

And in case it wasn’t obvious: in this story, “Old Nibel” is Old Norse, and “modern Nibel” is modern Norwegian. I speak neither of these languages, by the way.

Chapter 14: Tifa VII

“That ought to do it,” Aerith declares, brushing off her dress as the last monster topples over and collapses, dead as dead, if the gaping hole in its skull and charred body is any indication. She collapses her staff with a cheerful flourish and turns to grin at Tifa. “Now let’s pick the flowers for Chloe’s flower crown!”

 

Tifa picks up the basket from the spot where she’d left it when they’d first been accosted by the monsters, and follows after Aerith, who is practically skipping through the grass.

 

Chloe, Billy’s sister, had been slightly embarrassed to tell them of her task—it was, on the face of it, an absurdly simple request. She’d wanted to go out and pick flowers to make a flower crown, but couldn’t, because her favored flower meadow had recently been overrun by monsters. However, when Aerith heard that Chloe’s intent was to honor her mother’s memory, she immediately volunteered herself and Tifa. “After all, I just so happen to be a florist,” she boasts.

 

The flower meadow is nestled at the base of a granite plateau; north beyond the plateau are cliffs that overlook the ocean. It’s just the two of them, as the boys had gone to help Oliver with a livestock-snatching fiend with the promise of payment, of course. Cloud and Red had found Piko late yesterday afternoon, and Billy had reported that the rest of their chocobos were due to return by the end of the morning.

 

Aerith is in her element as she twirls around amidst the riot of color that is the flower field. She is nattering cheerfully about something, but Tifa isn’t really listening because she’s just taking in the sight of Aerith among the flowers and a clear blue sky. The morning sun is pouring down on her, and she looks like every bit the Ancient, as described in the more… esoteric planetology books that Barret and Jessie used to leave lying around at Seventh Heaven—the race of semi-divine beings to whom nature bends the knee, the ones who shape the very surface of the earth.

 

It makes the stirrings of jealousy (was it jealousy? She hopes not) from yesterday seem very stupid and foolish. Aerith can spend time with anyone she pleases, Cloud probably had no idea what was happening anyway, and nobody—least of all Tifa—has any claim on an Ancient.

 

“And then I said—hey, are you listening to me?” Aerith’s voice ripples through the vision she’s created in Tifa’s eyes. Aerith sounds mildly indignant, which makes Tifa immediately snap to attention.

 

“Sorry. I…um…what were you saying?” She musters up an apologetic smile. When Aerith’s little frown doesn’t go away, Tifa blurts, “You just looked really pretty just now.”No, wait, she didn’t mean to say that; even though it’s true, but it’s a bit too pert of a thing to say, isn’t it? “Um…”

 

Aerith tilts her head, and then giggles. “Thanks! That’s sweet of you. So how much of what I said did you not hear?”

 

“Uh…” Tifa dips her head, embarrassed.

 

“Let me guess. All of it.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Tifa says, a bit desperately. “It was rude of me. I’ll pay better attention.”

 

“You promise?”

 

Tifa nods. “Promise.”

 

Aerith leads them to a patch of red flowers. “These are red gerbera daisies,” she says, crouching down to run a finger across the petals of one. “What color flowers did we need again? Red, and…”

 

“Yellow, and white,” Tifa reports, holding up the colored sketch that Chloe had given them.

 

“All right! Let’s start with these. Come on,” Aerith says, reaching up to tug on Tifa’s hand until she’s kneeling next to Aerith. Armed with shears borrowed from Chloe, Aerith begins clipping stems with the speed and skill of a professional. “Anyway, back to what I was saying. So I said to Cloud, ‘are you crying?’ And he was like, ‘No!’”

 

“He cried?” Tifa asks incredulously.

 

“Sure did! He got all wobbly in the eyes; the mako just makes it more obvious, y’know? Even if it isn’t full-blown bawling, I can tell these things,” Aerith says confidently.

 

“Oh. Um. What was he crying for?”

 

“Well, if I had to guess…” Aerith taps a finger on Tifa’s cheek. “It’s because he really, really liked what you made for breakfast this morning.”

 

Tifa’s ears feel very hot. She tells herself that it’s the sun. “You think so?”

 

“I know so. I saw him bite down and immediately he, like, froze up for a minute, and then turned around and basically scarfed it down. I saw it all. Didn’t you say it was something they used to make back in Nibelheim?”

 

“Uh, sort of.” She’d had to make do with flour, instant potato flakes, cooking oil, and powdered milk—all the women in Nibelheim would’ve been scandalized at all the shortcuts, but a hack recipe would have to do in these reduced circumstances. At least they had sugar, and Tifa had been generous as possible when sprinkling it over Cloud’s share; everyone in Nibelheim knew that Claudia’s sullen little boy had a sweet tooth. It made him just a bit more agreeable. “It was missing cinnamon, though,” Tifa mutters, standing up.

 

Aerith’s arms reach for her as she rises. “Help me up,” she says, and Tifa does. Aerith squeezes their joined hands. “Seriously, Tifa. I’ve never been camping before; I didn’t think it was going to be this fun! And you’re so good at this outdoor survival stuff! Is there anything you can’t do?”

 

“Just the mountain guide training coming back to me. And you helped with the foraging,” Tifa says. “The ramsons were a good idea, and I didn’t think morels would still be around this late.”

 

“I still needed Red to help me find those.” Aerith winks. “I’m a city girl, remember? Nothing compared to you, o ‘best mountain guide there is.’”

 

“Don’t say that,” Tifa says, but Aerith is already crossing over to a patch of white daisies.

 

Aerith hums to herself as she clips the daisy stems and puts them in the basket that Tifa is holding. “Hey. You said you speak Nibel, right? What do you call daisies in Nibel?”

 

Tifa pauses. Her Nibel has been slow to return to her, since she’d gone so many years without speaking it. If she’d begun speaking it with Cloud again, it’s only because she’s mindful of eavesdroppers; sometimes she just doesn’t want people to know all of her business.

 

Even in Nibelheim, it was only the elderly who still spoke it regularly. Tifa’s father understood it but did not speak it often; her mother knew none at all. If not for Miss Gans, the town’s only schoolteacher, pushing for teaching Nibel in school, Tifa and her friends probably wouldn’t have learned to speak it at all. Miss Gans wasn’t even from the Nibel region; she had come from Junon, where she had studied linguistics at university, and traveled to the Nibel region to make recordings of Nibel. She’d somehow ended up the town’s schoolteacher when she saw how rapidly Nibel was dying out. Miss Gans had left Nibelheim the same year as Cloud had. A few years later, all of the remaining native Nibel speakers were dead.

 

“Daisy? Um…it’s tusenfryd. The name means something like, ‘a thousand joys’.”

 

Aerith gasps, smiling. “That’s pretty! And so fitting. I like that a lot.”

 

“What do daisies symbolize?”

 

“Oh, lots of things. Joy, of course. Purity and innocence. And there’s more meanings, depending on who you ask.” Having picked her share of daisies, Aerith puts them in the basket, and sets off again. Tifa follows her. “Wow! These are some really lovely forget-me-nots.” Aerith stops, and bends over to examine the swathe of small, blue flowers carpeting the slope of the meadow. Her braid falls over her shoulder and brushes the tips of the petals.

 

“They are pretty,” Tifa agrees. “We had something like these in Nibelheim. King-of-the-Nibels, we called them, because they were the most popular of the flowers that did manage to grow in the foothills.”

 

Aerith seems to consider for a moment, then plucks a few of the forget-me-nots before leading Tifa towards a patch of yellow flowers. “Here are our yellow flowers! Marigolds.” She flutters her eyelashes at Tifa. “And what are they called in Nibel?”

 

“Depends who you ask. When I learned it in school, the word was, uh, ringblom. But some the older people called it morgonfrue, ‘lady of the morning’. We used the petals to make tea.”

 

“Same here.” Aerith seems delighted with the impromptu language lesson. “So interesting! Imagine if Cloud was stuck doing this with me. He wouldn’t be giving me any Nibel lessons, that’s for sure! I’d have to carry the conversation the whole time.”

 

“You never know. He might,” Tifa says. “You’re hard to say no to.”

 

“So I’ve heard,” Aerith replies, her smile turning sly for a moment. “Whew, it’s getting warmer, isn’t it? And to think it was raining yesterday. C’mon, let’s go sit in the shade of that tree over there.”

 

Once they’re seated, Aerith takes the basket from Tifa’s hands. “This ought to be enough for two flower crowns! One for Chloe, and one for Billy.” She begins expertly cutting and twining the stems together.

 

Tifa unscrews the cap of the water canteen she had brought with her, and pours some water into her mouth. “Would you like some?”

 

“In a sec,” Aerith says, tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration as she weaves the stems together with the twine that Chloe had provided.

 

Tifa leans back and rests her head against the bark of the tree. She closes her eyes. Songbirds chitter their tunes in the background. “Kalm was so full of flowers,” Aerith murmurs, her fingers still working diligently. “Nothing at all like Midgar. I don’t think I had any competition there. In Kalm, though—I’d have a harder time making it as a florist. There were so many vendors, and they were a lot cheaper too; if I lived there, I’d have to think of something else to do.”

 

“In a market where everyone’s selling the same thing, it’s whoever has the best advertising that has the advantage,” Tifa says. “I bet people would be more likely to buy flowers from a Cetra; maybe they’d think their bouquet would come with extra blessings from the Planet or something if they bought it from you.”

 

“Or that I grew them in the Promised Land, and buying my flowers will bring them good luck and prosperity,” Aerith replies dryly. “I almost wish my heritage could just be an advertising gimmick, instead of something that could get me locked up and experimented on.”

 

Shit. She’s done it again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I didn’t…look, you’re more than a relic of the past, and you’re obviously more than some lucky charm that Shinra thinks will give them ownership over the Planet or something. You’re so much more than that.”

 

“Sure. My problem is that I don’t know what that ‘more’ means,” Aerith says lowly, eyes fixed on her work. “I just want to be free to choose, but surely you’ve seen by now that my heritage—it won’t let me do that. The Planet won’t let me, because I am the last, and there’s no way around that. So no, sometimes I don’t think I can be ‘more’.”

 

Tifa decides that she should have just stayed quiet. It feels like she keeps saying the wrong thing around Aerith, when the last thing Tifa wants to do is hurt her. Tifa wants to be a comfort to others; it’s what made her hardscrabble life in Midgar feel worthwhile, because the only other option was despair.

 

She looks down glumly at her gloved hands, eyes focusing on a bruise forming underneath one of her fingernails.

 

“Here!” Aerith says suddenly, and places a pretty little nosegay in Tifa’s upturned palms: a cluster of the daisies and marigolds and forget-me-nots that she’d gathered earlier. “This is for you. And no need for Cloud the delivery boy this time.”

 

“F-for me?” Tifa gapes down at the posy, then glances up to see Aerith looking at her earnestly.

 

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

 

“Of course I like it. It’s lovely. Thank you, Aerith.”

 

Aerith plucks the nosegay from Tifa’s hand, slotting it into one of Tifa’s suspenders. She beams at Tifa. “There. Since you like it, wear it proudly for me.”

 

Tifa’s ears are very warm indeed. “All—all right.”

 

“You know…” Aerith studies the half-finished flower crowns on her lap. “Think of it as an apology.”

 

Tifa is surprised. “For what?”

 

“I don’t mean to make you feel like you’re always saying the wrong thing around me.” She shrugs. “I was never good at making friends. Being a Cetra while also being a kid…I was the weird kid who talked to flowers and ghosts. I even told my mom that her husband had died before she even found out. As you can imagine, stuff like that didn’t exactly endear me to the other kids. I got better at learning when not to say things, but…it never made me any better at getting close to people. And I told myself that it didn’t matter, until Zack…but we never did get that much time together. So I told Cloud back in Kalm that I wished I had friends when I was growing up. I told him not to take you for granted.”

 

“It’s not your fault,” Tifa says firmly. “You spent your first seven years locked up in a lab. Wouldn’t have made it easy for you to make friends outside since you weren’t allowed that type of interaction. Plus, with Turks following you around…anyway, my point is that if you didn’t have friends growing up, it wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’ve only known you for a few days, and I like you plenty.”

 

“Really?” Now it seems it’s Aerith’s turn to gape, and Tifa is a little sad that Aerith seems surprised by her declaration, as opposed to being smug about her obvious charms. (As she probably would’ve been, earlier in their acquaintance.)

 

Tifa smiles sheepishly. “I mean, what’s not to like, right?” She pats her stomach. “I’m still alive because of you. It’s only right that I don’t offend you.”

 

Aerith shakes her head, but her expression brightens a little. “That’s sweet of you to say.”

 

“And true.” Tifa looks down at the nosegay she’s wearing. A splash of brilliant color against white and black. “I don’t hold hands with people I don’t like. So there’s that.” As if to put a point on it, Tifa places a hand over Aerith’s.

 

Aerith laughs. “Good to know. Because, y’know, I like holding hands with you.”

 

 

//

 

 

Out of their group, only Aerith has never ridden a chocobo before. That isn’t to say that the rest of them are seasoned riders—Barret is the most reluctant about the whole thing. He expresses his doubts as to whether it’s safe for him or his bird. (Meanwhile, Aerith seems very thrilled to be trying something new, while everyone else is mostly just surprised that Red can even mount a bird in the first place.)

 

Chloe is delighted with the flower crowns, and in exchange for the kindness, she makes Billy agree to lower the chocobo rental fee, and Chloe also teaches Aerith the basics on how to ride sidesaddle, which requires a different saddle from the rest. Billy himself seems impressed with Cloud’s riding ability, even going so far as to tell Cloud that his ambition is to build up a stable of racing chocobos—a not-so-subtle hint that he is looking for a jockey and that Cloud ought to consider it. (Cloud does not seem to take the hint.)

 

With chocobos secured for their travel to Junon, the group returns to base camp at the abandoned ferry building; Cloud and Barret bicker over whether to cross the swamp and risk Midgardsormen, or take the long way around the mountains, towards the southeastern coast of the continent. Cloud is all for crossing the swamp and then going through the mythril mine, but Barret is against it. This is a surprisingly cautious attitude from Barret, who for as long as Tifa had known him, had only seemed to get bolder to the point of recklessness. It’s only after Aerith reminds Cloud of Chadley, that Cloud hesitates. Chadley had promised Cloud a new summon materia, on the condition of helping Chadley with his scientific survey of the Grasslands. Apparently taking part in Charley’s research project supersedes the hunt for Sephiroth in Cloud’s mind—and Aerith seems to know that.

 

While the Shinra intern seems harmless enough, the common thread of Hojo that links Chadley and Sephiroth makes Tifa uneasy. Something in the back of Tifa’s mind catches like a burr on that notion—that it might be Chadley’s connection to Sephiroth through his former employer that makes Cloud so amenable to Chadley’s requests.

 

With Cloud and Barret at a stalemate, Red gives his opinion. “I suggest that we obtain the summon first. That will only help us. Any time lost in that endeavor, we can make up for by crossing the swamp.”

 

Cloud folds his arms, looking smug and clearly interpreting Red to be on his side. Barret scowls and looks at Tifa and Aerith. “And what about you two?” he demands.

 

Tifa looks at Aerith. Aerith tilts her head. “If we want to find Sephiroth sooner, then I’d go with Cloud.” She smiles, but it’s brittle. “From what I learned at our last encounter with him…I’ve got the feeling that he can’t stay away from you, Cloud, no matter how long you take to follow.”

 

Barret grunts. “That the Planet speaking to you?”

 

Aerith shakes her head. “Maybe.”

 

“Let’s go with Red’s suggestion,” Tifa says.

 

 

 

As it turns out, the whole discussion goes out the window when they’re all awakened by a screaming Piko racing out of the swamp at daybreak. The chocobo charges through their camp, his saddle empty—and there’s no sign of Cloud anywhere.

Notes:

The Reunion is coming for you, Cloud.

And yes, this whole chapter was written because I wanted Tifa to do the flower picking side quest with Aerith.