Chapter 4
Dreams swirled through Tifa's mind, vague and wraith-like, gone before she could grasp them. Something at the back of her mind realized that she was drifting towards consciousness, but her central awareness could not seem to comprehend this.
She rolled over, nearly moving back when she found this new surface colder than the former one--but she brushed against something much warmer. Skin? She moved closer, curling up against the new warmth, eyes closed lightly in contentment.
Her final leap to consciousness was sudden and disorienting. For a moment, she fancied that the warmth had been little more than a desire expressed in her dreams, but opening her eyes quickly disproved this. In her sleep, she had curled up against Cloud, who thankfully was still asleep and had not noticed.
Hurriedly, Tifa sat up and moved away, though she found herself regretting it when she lost his warmth. Silly girl. You were too tired to even take out your sleeping bag. She glanced around her only to notice that her teammates hadn't bothered either.
She rubbed her bare arms, wondering how they were to make it to Snow Village without the right gear. They'd been so caught up in reaching Aeris in time that all they had for warmth were their sleeping bags, which were hardly made for travelling in. Coats would definitely be in order for when they reached the next town. And pants, too, she added mentally, tucking her cold legs beneath her.
Should she wake the others? she wondered. Cloud had wanted to move on quickly, after all. Still, she hated to have to disturb them when they all looked so peaceful...
Sighing, Tifa crawled over to Cloud and shook his arm a little. "Hey, Cloud. Wake up."
His blue eyes snapped open, and he sat up so quickly that she started and had to stifle a yelp. He turned to look at her, blinking several times before recognition crossed his face. "Oh... Hey, Tifa."
She smiled in mild relief. "Were you having a dream or something?"
"Yeah," he answered, looking away.
"Seems like you've been having a lot of nightmares lately," she said, studying him carefully. "You shouldn't keep so much to yourself."
He flashed her a rare smile. "I'll manage, Teef. Don't worry about it."
"A-all right..."
Cloud turned to wake the other two. Nanaki got up, stretched, and sat back on his haunches without a word of complaint. Yuffie griped and grumbled, but she, too, got up.
"All right, let's go," Cloud said simply.
"Good morning to you, too," Yuffie muttered as she followed the others off down the tunnel.
"I'm not sure it's morning, Yuffie," Tifa said.
"Indeed," Nanaki agreed. "It is rather dark for morning."
Their leader nodded his agreement. "Good thing we have you along, Nanaki. We'd be nearly blind without your tail."
Tifa glanced at him. No, Cloud wouldn't have been nearly blind; his Mako eyes allowed him to see decently in the dark. Nanaki probably had excellent night vision as well. It was she and Yuffie who would have been stumbling about like drunkards. She felt briefly grateful that he had not mentioned any of these things.
A little more than an hour later, they reached the cave's exit, and moonlit snow fields stretched before them. Another mountain range lay in the distance, and a faint glow in the east told them that the sun was not long in rising.
"There are tracks in the snow," Nanaki noted, nodding towards two sets of imprints stretching off into the white, nearly filled in by the wind shifting snow across the valley.
"How old do you think they are?" Cloud asked, following them with his eyes.
The feline shook his head. "Difficult to tell, but they don't seem recent."
"Aeris couldn't move so fast, could she?" Tifa said doubtfully. "It looks like Sephiroth stopped carrying her, and she walked on her own."
"So maybe they're not so far ahead of us..." Cloud murmured, apparently sharing her feelings of mixed hope and anxiety. It was bitterly cold out here, and Aeris had nothing to warm her. But if she was on her feet, she would slow Sephiroth down, and just maybe they could catch up.
After pulling out their sleeping bags at Tifa's suggestion, the group trudged onward through the snow, following the faint tracks left by the swordsman and his captive.
Hardly half an hour out from the cave, Yuffie, who had enough energy that she often wandered ahead, gave a cry. When the other three caught up, they found her tugging something a shade of familiar pink out from under a few inches of snow.
"That's Aeris's dress," Tifa pointed out uselessly. "This isn't a good sign..."
"Something must have happened here," Nanaki said. "The snow is less even here... as though from a scuffle or a fall."
Cloud expression darkened, anger and anxiety warring across it. "He wouldn't have..."
"We shouldn't try to figure this out," Yuffie interrupted, speaking hurriedly. "This is just really weird, and we have nothing to go on but some uneven snow and some clothes."
"Right," Tifa agreed, grateful, for once, for the teenager's quick mouth. "Let's just drop it." She gathered up Aeris's dress and the red jacket that Yuffie had also uncovered, and she tucked them away in her pack.
The group moved on in silence.
She rapped on the door with several loud, quick knocks. The time limit he had given her made her feel anxious and the whole ordeal quite urgent. That, and the pangs afflicting her stomach made the hunger border on nausea.
She felt a rush of relief when a young woman answered the door, dressed in a heavy sweater and ankle-length skirt, obvious warmth that Aeris immediately envied. The room beyond her looked equally cozy, the dark oak-paneled walls flickering with the light of what must have been a fire.
The woman's mouth worked, only half-formed expressions of astonishment and confusion making it past her lips. "What...? Are you...?" Obviously the last person she expected when she opened the door was a starving, shivering, scantily-clad Cetra.
"Can I please come inside?" Aeris asked, noting with some surprise that she hardly felt embarrassed by her condition. It seemed that she had spent so long half-naked and around Sephiroth, who made no big deal of it, that it no longer bothered her much. Or maybe the hunger and cold had just overridden any possible mortification.
"Ce-certainly," the woman stuttered, opening the door wider and stepping aside to allow her through.
The Cetra entered gratefully. The warm air around her felt like heaven.
"Wh-what exactly...? Why are you... ah...?"
Aeris turned around and bowed her head apologetically. "I'm sorry, but I really can't explain. And I can't stay long. I just came to ask if you had any food."
"Food? Oh, yes, of course, I'll get you a blanket and cook you up something hot." The young woman started off down the hall, forsaking her desire for an explanation in the recognition that her unlikely visitor needed help.
"Wait a second!" Aeris protested, hurrying after her. As soon as the living room of the house was visible, her gaze darted around for a clock, and she marked the time in her mind.
"What is it...?"
"I really don't have long, not long enough for you to cook. Just... whatever you can spare, at a moment's notice."
The woman's brow furrowed in confusion, but she nodded a bit. "All right then... I'll fetch you something. You go warm yourself by the fire in the meantime."
"Thank you so very much."
Aeris watched her disappear into another room, then hesitantly made her way to the fireplace, sitting down on the rug in front of it. Beside her, an elderly woman was sitting in a rocking chair, and she did a double take, staring.
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, and had to endure a few coughs before she could ask, "What are you doing dressed like that?"
"You'd rather not know," the Cetra said simply, closing her eyes and basking in the fire's warmth, appreciating even the painful protests of her toes as feeling returned to them.
"You'll catch cold walking around like that," the old woman told her. "I'll have my granddaughter fetch you some warm clothes and--"
"I can't accept them," Aeris interrupted.
"And why ever not?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." She looked up as the young woman returned with half a loaf of bread, a chunk of some sort of smoked meat, and a glass of milk. She accepted them gratefully, cold though they were, and refrained from tearing into the food ravenously until she had said a polite 'thank you.'
She had never eaten so fast in her life. It couldn't be good for her, and she worried that her stomach would reject it soon afterward, but what else could she do? She had a feeling that if she returned with any food for later, Sephiroth would not let her keep it. She glanced at the clock. Two minutes.
Aeris swallowed down the last of the speedy meal, set down the empty glass, and leapt to her feet. The two women had been watching her with a mixture of shock and amazement, and now they started at her sudden movement.
She bowed to the both of them. "Thank you for your kindness. I have to be going now." She started for the door.
The young woman caught her arm. "Isn't there anything else we can do for you...?" she asked.
The Cetra blinked in surprise at her pleading tone, and then realized how it must have torn at these two to be allowed to provide her so little. She thought for a moment, then nodded with a slight smile. "If anyone comes asking about me, tell them I'm doing all right, and that I'm not hurt. Can you do that?"
"A-all right. I will."
"Thank you again." She stole a glance at the clock. "I really need to be going. Goodbye." She hurried for the door, regretfully leaving the fire's warmth and the women's concern behind her. As she opened the door, gritting her teeth against the cold, she wondered what they made of her brief visit. She wondered if Cloud would also pass through here. She wondered how her friends were doing.
She looked up to see Sephiroth waiting in the same place as before, and trudged through the snow to rejoin him.
"I did not think you would be so punctual," he remarked, and she let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. He was letting it go at that.
"If you had to come for me, who knows what you would have done to the people living in that house?" she said.
"Point," he agreed. "But what does it matter? I want to show you something."
Aeris blinked rapidly. "What?" What could he possibly want to show her?
He did not answer her, but turned instead to walk along a path of hard-packed snow that ran through the center of the little town. She kept to the lighter, untrodden stuff, afraid that something so icy would cling and tear at the soles of her feet. He matched her pace without seeming to notice her.
Sephiroth led her to a rather unextraordinary-looking house, finally pulling ahead of her to open the door and barge in without knocking. Aeris followed, finding the room quite empty. She looked about, spying a set of stairs that led downward, but there were no sounds of anyone rushing to meet them. Her first thought was that whoever lived here was not home at the moment, but upon a closer inspection, it became apparent that no one had been here for quite some time. Dust lay thick on everything. The place was deserted.
But at least it's warmer in here.
She glanced at Sephiroth questioningly, but he did not meet her gaze. He moved to shut the door and scanned the room almost indifferently. She frowned slightly, but went back to inspecting it for herself.
This main room was occupied by a rectangular wooden table that did not seem to have any chairs to it, nor anything lying on its surface. Machines of various sorts lined the left wall. Her gaze wandered up to where light streaked in through a half-closed skylight. Opposite that, a camera occupied a corner where it would have had a full view of the room, had its lens not been broken.
At a loss as to what she was supposed to recognize, Aeris asked aloud, "What is this place?"
"The home of the late Professor Gast," he replied. "Abandoned for some twenty-two years now. I suppose you do not remember it."
"Of course not," she said, eyeing him in confusion. "I would've been an infant then, and anyway, it was Professor Hojo who... worked with me, not Professor Gast."
"How little you know. You can speak to your ancestors, can you not? Your mother told you nothing?"
"About what? Professor Gast?"
He nodded.
"No. Why should she have?"
"I should think you would have asked about your father."
Aeris blinked. "You mean... Professor Gast...? But that's ridiculous!"
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "Why is it ridiculous?"
"Because he was a scientist, and..." She faltered, and shook her head. "It just doesn't make any sense. You're probably just making this up to confuse me anyway." Somehow, it didn't seem that way.
"You want proof? There are some videos over there." He motioned towards one of the machines.
Aeris blinked, glanced up at the broken camera, and made her way over to the machine he'd indicated. The tapes were tucked on a low, dusty shelf to the left of the old-fashioned VCR and monitor. She skimmed the hand-scrawled labels on the sides-- The Original Crisis, What is Weapon?, Confidential - Daughter's Record: 10th Day after birth, and another marked ten days later.
At least it's 'daughter' and not 'specimen,' she thought.
Still, the titles alone proved nothing. She pulled out the last in the group and inserted it into the VCR, taking a moment to find the power button for the machine.
And she watched as her mother, Ifalna, and an older man with disheveled brown hair and a gentle manner--Professor Gast?-- spoke to one another in friendly, almost joking tones. Darling, she called him.
She watched as Hojo burst in with two soldiers, and her mother stepped back in fear. Ifalna tried to give herself up, but Professor Gast--her father--would not have it. The camera's video feed failed. Brave words, gunshots, screams, sobs, and Hojo's satisfied chuckle. The tape ended.
Aeris stared blankly at the monitor. At length, she ejected the tape from the VCR, put it back on the shelf, and turned off the machines, every motion strictly mechanical. Then she turned to Sephiroth, her voice a bit shaken. It was not every day you discovered your father to be the last person imaginable, found him a person worth knowing, and listened to his death all within the span of a few minutes. "All right. I'm at a loss here. How does that help you, showing me that?"
"I thought you could add it to your list of futile sacrifices," he replied coolly. "You have a number already, and you will have more by the time it is all over."
"What was he supposed to do?" she asked softly. "Step aside and let it happen, then let Shinra take him into custody and eliminate any chance he might have had? They wouldn't have let him go free, that's for sure. They'd probably have made him work for them again."
"But was it not incredibly foolish of him to attack armed guards without a weapon or any skill in fighting? What point is there in dying when you accomplish nothing? Why take such a risk when your life will surely be forfeit and nothing will come of it?"
She shook her head, seeing the logic of his words but unable to accept them. "Maybe he did accomplish something. A gesture of defiance." She looked pointedly at Sephiroth. "He didn't let Shinra use him."
Sephiroth's lack of response to her barb rendered it ineffectual. "And he demonstrated to Ifalna just how impossible defiance was. Captivity or death. She chose not to abandon you, though no doubt she could have been happier in 'returning to the Planet' than in becoming a specimen. Of course, with your escape, she made another useless sacrifice, yes?"
"To get me away from the Shinra, to somewhere safer..." Aeris murmured. "It wasn't useless. She got me out of the lab."
He looked her over, and the intensity of his gaze made her shudder. "And what are you, Aeris? The last of your kind. A pitiful excuse for a Cetra. A bony flower girl from the slums. Alone, nearly starving, condemned to whatever fate I choose for you. What good did your mother do by saving you?"
She forced herself to meet his gaze, as steadily as she could. They shouldn't have, but his insults stung. Bony? some faraway part of her mind echoed in dismay. "She made it possible for me to live long enough to stop you now. Holy is coming; you know it as well as I do. How do you expect to stop it? How do you expect to continue with your plan?"
"You underestimate me, Aeris," he said with a chilling smile. "I know what I am doing."
"Bluffing," she stated bluntly.
He appeared unruffled, continuing to watch her with those penetrating eyes. "You will see, once we reach the Promised Land."
Aeris's expression slowly shifted to a frown. "We're not headed towards the Promised Land," she said, confidence in this new fact growing with each word.
"Not the one spoken of by your kind perhaps, but a Promised Land all the same."
"The Shinra's kind, you mean," she added with some disgust.
Sephiroth merely shrugged. "It suits my needs, and that is all that matters."
"And Jenova?"
"Hers as well, of course. I act for her."
"Why serve her?"
"We share a common goal, and she is older, wiser. Why not?"
Aeris shook her head. "If she's only using you--"
"She is not."
"How can you be so certain?"
"I know her, as you do not." He moved for the door. "Come."
Still frowning, she followed him back outside, flinching and nearly recoiling from the blast of cold that greeted her.
The man at the edge of the half-dead and dying thicket blinked rapidly in astonishment as the unlikely pair approached. He stared first at Sephiroth, then at Aeris, quickly averting his gaze and looking back at the silver-haired warrior.
"H-hey!" he stuttered finally, just as they passed by him. "It's dangerous that way!"
Aeris bit her lip and looked to Sephiroth, hoping he would not kill the man for no other reason than for warning him of things that posed no threat to him.
But the swordsman merely shot the man a glare and continued on without even a slight pause in his step. She hurried after him.
On the far side of the stand of trees, a slope stretched down into white oblivion, growing steeper and steeper as it went. Boulders gave it rough borders on either side, and some debris littered the main path downwards. Sephiroth started down it without word or hesitation, and Aeris had no choice but to follow him now, too.
She grew less sure of her footing as the incline grew steeper, and, inevitably, she slipped backwards and fell, sliding a little in the snow. She sat up, but doubted she could climb to her feet. She watched Sephiroth's back, shivering, then called after him, "Carry me?"
He did not respond.
Aeris raised her voice, unsteady though it was. "I can't f-follow you here!"
Nothing.
She struggled to her feet, making it over to one wall of boulders after a few falls. Using the rocks to steady herself, she managed to keep a faster pace without falling for some time. But with her fatigue, it did not seem like she had much longer before she collapsed and failed to rise. So she tried to catch up to Sephiroth, lest he forget about her entirely and leave her to die on this mountain.
She lost her footing again, and this time she went slipping and tumbling down the slope, coming to a stop only when she reached... something. She was too numb to feel what it was. Twisting and uncurling, she looked up.
"Insistent, aren't you?" Sephiroth queried flatly, and she realized she had collided with his legs.
"I- Ah..."
With a sigh, he picked her up, holding her against his chest. At first she was surprised he would warm her so, but then she remembered that he did not want her dead. He could not let her freeze to death, but he could keep her cold, exhausted, and starving, though the pain in her stomach had quieted, after an initial nausea that she had forced herself to ignore.
Aeris wanted to fall asleep in his arms, but doubted he would let her. Had it really been so long since she had last slept, or was it the cold playing tricks on her, making her feel more tired than she otherwise would have been?
She peered up at Sephiroth, studying his face, but could make out no expression. "You know," she commented drowsily, "for someone who's quite certain he's going to become a god, you don't look very happy."
"Why should I be happy, carrying you around?" he asked.
"Hmm. I was under the impression that, under normal circumstances, we might have been something resembling friends."
He scoffed, as though he couldn't imagine anything that would qualify as 'normal circumstances.'
"But then, you never had any friends."
"Hardly."
"It's a little sad..."
"You should not pity me."
"I'd pity anyone who couldn't tell truth from lies anymore."
"Then perhaps you should pity yourself," he suggested.
"I probably do make a pitiable figure," Aeris agreed in a murmur. "But self-pity would only make me worse off." She started as they passed by a huge snowman, a little wind-worn but still recognizable. "Umm... What was that?" she asked.
"A snowman."
"Yes, I can see that much," she said dryly. "What's it doing here?"
"This is a poorly-maintained snowboarding slope," Sephiroth answered. "I expect the snowmen are for decoration and obstacles."
"Snowboarding...? No wonder it's so steep. So why are we just walking down it?"
"Why not?"
"Wouldn't we get to the bottom faster if we snowboarded or something?"
He gave her a look, raising an eyebrow. "Do I look like a snowboarder?"
Aeris laughed. "You mean to tell me that the Great Sephiroth doesn't know how?" He scowled at her, and his expression only made her laugh harder, though she knew it was a bad idea. Still, she couldn't help it, and she felt that she needed to, whatever the consequences.
"You should not laugh," Sephiroth deadpanned.
She tried to stifle her sounds of mirth, but could not. "But... you... snowboarding...!"
He ran a finger along her jaw, and she felt it as a knife cutting to the bone. With a choked cry, she pressed a hand to the wound, drawing it away and finding--
There was no blood.
"Wha...?" she asked, staring blankly at her bare fingers as the pain faded from her jaw line.
"Illusions can seem quite real at times, yes?" Sephiroth asked her.
"Y-yes..." she agreed. "How did you...?"
His voice was indifferent once more, no longer angry now that he had stopped her laughter. "I have been able to deceive people this way for a long time. Your friend Cloud, I believe, is especially susceptible to illusions. In fact, he has managed to trap himself inside of one."
"What do you mean?" Aeris queried anxiously.
"He believes he is someone he is not. You suspected it, but you are not one to conclude that a 'friend' of yours is not even really a person."
"You're lying," she said. "Maybe he has gaps in his memory, but that doesn't mean he's not a person."
"Oh, really?" Sephiroth asked. "Perhaps you should speak to Tifa when you see her next. She knows more than you think."
"Tifa...?" The significance of his statement made her brighten. "You mean you'll let me see her again? I'll get to see my friends again?"
"Eventually, although by then I am not certain you will care."
"Of course I will. Gods and Planet both, it'll be good to see them..."
"Your enthusiasm is disgusting."
"You're just jealous," she told him. "If you had friends like mine, you'd miss them, too."
"Would I?" he queried, and there was something almost wistful in his tone. Or was she imagining things again?
"You would," she answered.
Sephiroth scoffed, his gaze finally shifting from her to the landscape before them.
Do you know what you do to him, child?
Aeris started. Planet? she thought, not daring to speak its name aloud.
Torn, but barely. The Crisis from the Sky keeps him tightly. Be careful.
I knew this would be a hard game from the start, Planet, but what have I got to lose? I thought I'd be dead by now.
Not dead. You have chosen the harder path. I cannot understand, but I am glad and I am worried.
I'll be all right.
I hope so.
Planet... why haven't you spoken before now? I... I would have appreciated just hearing your voice.
He was not letting me.
She frowned in puzzlement, and worry. If he could interfere with her connection to the Planet... Then why now? she asked, interrupting herself before the thought could go too far.
Don't know. But I think it is a good sign.
...then you think he cares?
About you? Certainly.
Aeris closed her eyes. Then I'm glad, too.