Chapter 26
It was a nightmare that woke her, a nightmare in which things had gone differently, in which Jenova had turned on her, without anyone to stand in its way. Even the memory of the alien made her skin crawl. That was the thing which had nearly wiped out her ancestors? It didn't surprise her. It had been hard enough just being near it.
For a long time, Aeris just lay there, staring at the ceiling and trying to calm her racing pulse. She sensed nothing abnormal here, nothing alien, nothing frightening. The ceiling even looked familiar; as her mind cleared, she realized she was in Icicle Inn.
She sat up slowly, looking around. At the end of her bed lay Nanaki, sleeping more deeply than she'd ever seen. Reno and Vincent occupied the other beds in the room, both unconscious. She slid out of bed, checking each of them to make sure they'd be all right. Then she shuffled to the door and stepped out into the hallway.
She faltered there for a moment. It was night, and the hall lights were dimmed. She left the door open and walked slowly to the next room down. She was still so very tired, and her body moved sluggishly, but she had to see what had happened to her friends. She had to see if all of them had made it, or not.
She knocked softly on the door and waited. A moment passed before it opened, and Reeve's face greeted her. His face was creased with worry, and he looked much older. "Oh, Aeris," he said softly. "You're awake already."
"Couldn't sleep," she murmured. "How is everyone?"
He frowned, not answering for long enough that she knew they'd lost someone. Finally he stepped back to let her inside. "Not so good."
Tifa, Yuffie, and Cid lay in the room's three beds. The room was lit only by one of the bedside lamps, but she could hear their breathing, and sense that they were still alive. She made her way to Tifa's bed, looking down at the unconscious brunette. "Where's Cloud?" she asked finally. She turned to Reeve. "And Barret?"
He shook his head. "They... didn't make it. I couldn't do anything for them. I'm sorry."
"No, it's... not your fault." Aeris swallowed, looking back at Tifa and fisting her hand in the blanket. She'd known this might happen, that Sephiroth might...
Her head jerked back up. "Where's Sephiroth?"
"He's in the next room. The innkeeper's watching him."
She nodded stiffly. "Did he help you bring us here, the innkeeper?"
"He and the staff, and the Highwind's crew, they all helped. I told them what you all had done. But I didn't tell them about Sephiroth. I... Aeris, what happened down there?"
She was silent for a moment. She reached to touch Tifa's arm and winced at just the brief sense she got of the woman's wounds. "I'll explain more later, but... He gave it up, at the very end. Jenova turned on him, so he gave up... He won't try anything. He doesn't have the will. Just... don't judge him. Don't let anyone else judge him. Let me decide."
"What about the rest of us? What about Tifa? She's lost everything because of him, hasn't she?"
"I know," Aeris said, and swallowed again. "But Tifa doesn't know him like I do. She'd probably want him dead, and that's not what he deserves. He wants to die."
Aeris hesitated and moved to Yuffie. Her frown deepened as she found the ninja to be in no better condition. Cid was perhaps worse. Desperation at last broke through the apathy her weariness had granted her, and her voice cracked. "Oh, Planet... I can't heal all of them. Reeve, are you sure there's nothing you can do?"
"I... can't handle wounds like these," he said, wringing his hands. "Magic isn't my strong point."
"What about the villagers? Aren't there any healers here?"
He shook his head. "They don't have materia around here. I asked, but no one seems to know how to use it. They bandaged them as best they could..."
"A-aeris?"
She started and looked down at Cid, biting her lip. "Cid, just..."
"The others... they okay?"
She hesitated, not knowing what to tell him.
"They ain't, are they?" He shut his eyes for a moment. "Gods-fucking-damnit. Well, never mind. Keep it to yourself, I don't need to go out on bad news."
"Cid... You're not going to die."
"Look on your face tells me someone's gonna. You help the others first. I've lived longer."
Aeris shook her head. "But what about Shera?"
"Shit... Well... She deserves better anyhow. Just tell her, y'know... I love her."
"You're not going to die."
"Damnit, Aeris, just go help the others."
She sank her teeth into her lip, nodded her defeat, and turned back to Yuffie and Tifa. This was all wrong. None of them deserved death. Certainly they weren't saints, but no matter what they had done, none of them deserved to die. Not Cloud, not Barret, not Cid. They all had people waiting for them. Tifa, Marlene, Shera... what were they supposed to do?
She healed Yuffie first, mending the worst of her injuries, the ones that could kill her. She was so young for all that she'd been through with them. She had a father waiting for her back home, and a home to go back to. A home to rebuild now that the world was stable enough for it. Yuffie had Wutai, and Wutai needed her. It wasn't right that she'd come this close to death.
Aeris stumbled to Tifa, and focused on her wounds. Tifa had been through so much. She'd lost two homes, first Nibelheim and then Sector 7, and with them all the people she'd known and loved except Marlene. Even Cloud was gone. Cloud, the one she had pinned all her hopes and dreams on, and they'd all thought her right for doing it. Aeris had thought she was lucky, to have him to move on with after all this was over.
Dots swam in her vision, threatening to blind her entirely and send her back into unconsciousness. She dropped to a crouch on the floor and shut her eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
"Don't push yourself, Aeris," Reeve said.
She was surprised to find him next to her, his hand on her shoulder. She began to shake her head and quickly stopped. "No, I need to, or Cid will... I can't let him..." She grasped Reeve's arm. "Help me over to him."
"You need to rest. You're barely conscious."
"Rest can wait. I'll be all right."
"But..." He stopped. "Right." He helped her up and all but carried her over to Cid's now-unconscious form.
Her legs wouldn't support her. She fell to her knees at his bedside and reached up to touch his arm. She closed her eyes and willed his wounds to heal. She could feel it starting to happen. Just a little bit more, and...
Her thoughts left her abruptly, and Reeve caught her before she hit the floor.
Sephiroth could scarcely remember the last time he had slept in a bed. Not since before Nibelheim. He had never needed much sleep, and frequently when he was tired, he had slept on the floor or in a chair, not caring enough to use a bed even if one was available. The Nibelheim inn had been short one bed, and he had spent the night by the window, probing his memory.
Since then, no bed had been welcome to him. So why was he here now?
Ah, yes. He was with Aeris and her friends. The Cetra had probably had something to do with it.
He sat up, looking around to regain some sense of place and time. Icicle Inn. A wall clock read 6:49, though he could not tell if it were morning or night. Either way, he'd slept a long time. Aeris and her friends had put up a better fight than he had expected.
But not good enough. Indeed, the other two beds in the room were occupied by corpses. Barret and the--and Cloud had both died. Perhaps he should have felt guilt for having killed them, but he accepted the facts indifferently.
The room's only other occupant was a native man who had nodded off, and Sephiroth spared him only a glance before he moved out into the hallway. He listened carefully, but heard nothing that would tell him where Aeris rested. In fact, there was a silence about this whole place that felt strange to him, but not entirely unfamiliar or unwelcome. He remembered clearly what he had done, but hadn't quite realized all its implications. That constant presence in his mind, the background murmur of Jenova's thoughts, was gone.
He tested the knob of the next door down, turned it slowly, and peered inside.
Aeris sat crouched on the floor near a bed in which lay Tifa, and Reeve was beside her. She seemed to be conscious through sheer will, and Reeve had to help her over to another of the beds. She dropped down beside Cid, desperate to heal.
Sephiroth watched in fascination. He did not understand this kind of commitment. He did not understand how she could care so strongly for her friends or try so desperately to save them. If Aeris were in such danger, would he push himself so hard to help her? He doubted it. It was one thing if it was easily within his power, but the kind of effort she put forth, that was beyond him. How was any one person worth that?
Before, she'd spoken to him as though he, too, could have friends as she did, but the scene before him only convinced him of that impossibility. He simply wasn't capable of such human relationships. He didn't understand them.
Aeris fainted, and Reeve carefully gathered her up. He turned for the door and froze. "You. What are you doing here?"
"You brought me here, didn't you?" Sephiroth said, but quickly shook his head in dismissal. "Is Aeris all right?"
"Why should you care?"
He waited.
Reeve sighed. "She's all right. This isn't the first time she's pushed herself too hard trying to heal someone."
"I take it your pilot is dying?"
The other man's face darkened with anger. "You should know; you're the one who put him in this condition. Why the hell do you need to bother asking?"
Sephiroth shrugged.
Reeve glared at him, and without the burden in his arms, Sephiroth thought the man might actually have tried assaulting him. "Look," he said instead through clenched teeth, "I need to get Aeris back to her bed. You stay right where you are. Don't you dare move an inch."
"Or what?"
"Ugh... Just don't move." Reeve pushed past him with Aeris in his arms, and Sephiroth watched him until he disappeared beyond the door frame.
He turned back to survey the room, and then went to check each of its occupants in turn, disregarding Reeve's order. The man had no power over him, and he had no intention of doing any further harm anyway. It hardly mattered now. He had swerved from his path at the last possible moment, just barely avoiding crashing to an end. He had chosen (what a thought!) not to go through with it.
He shook his head and moved on.
Cid was most certainly dying. Sephiroth stood beside his bed, studying him, wondering why Aeris had wanted so badly to save him. They weren't particularly close, and Sephiroth felt even she would have to admit they were little more than acquaintances. Aeris had no need for this man, and it was very likely that after this band had recovered and gone their separate ways, she would never see him again. So why? Had she only wanted to save him because he needed her help?
Was that why she had tried to warn Sephiroth about Jenova? Why she had persuaded him to get up and fight? Or had she only helped him because she had needed his help in return? Somehow he doubted that; she had never seemed to want anything in return for her actions. Still, it was hard to believe that she could do such a thing for him.
"What do you think you're doing?" Reeve's voice demanded as he reentered the room.
"Nothing. I'm only thinking."
"While you're thinking, why don't you make yourself useful?"
Sephiroth glanced up at him in confusion.
Reeve's face was still set in a frown, and he spoke with apparent difficulty, clearly hating each word. "Surely you know some healing spells."
"Healing spells? You mean for Highwind?"
"Don't give me that clueless look," Reeve snapped. "I can't heal him, and Aeris didn't have the strength left, so we're stuck with you. I hate the idea of it, but he doesn't deserve to die."
Sephiroth supposed he didn't. The pilot's life may have been worthless to him, but others felt differently, and in the end, it was not his place to judge. His own life had been worthless from the start, and despite all his designs to end it, Aeris had saved him.
He knew it was right to save this man, and while it mattered little to him whether Cid lived or died, it did matter what Aeris thought. She would want no part of him now, but to learn that he had stood here looking down on this man and let him die, after all that she'd done, that could only add fire to her hatred. It would be a true rejection of her and the kindness she'd shown him there, at the end.
"Fine," he said. He touched Cid's arm and probed his wounds through the contact. Once he understood them, he puzzled out the weaves he would need to mend them, and smoothly executed them.
When he had finished, he straightened and turned to Reeve. "Is there anyone else on the verge of death?" he asked stiffly.
The man looked startled, as though he hadn't honestly expected Sephiroth to heal the man, and he certainly hadn't expected such a question. "These three were the worst off, so unless you can bring back the dead, you've done enough."
"And Aeris?"
"What about her?"
"She cannot be perfectly fine."
"If she's wounded, she's been hiding it well."
Sephiroth nodded and turned for the door.
"Where are you going?" Reeve asked sharply.
"To wait for her. If you have no further use for me, then I am only awaiting Aeris's verdict."
Reno didn't understand how he was still alive. Aside from Aeris, he had been the last one standing. Even if she could have healed the wounds Sephiroth had inflicted on him, she couldn't have held her own against that bastard. And while Sephiroth wanted Aeris alive, he didn't give a shit about the rest of them.
So what was he doing alive and relatively well, lying in a warm, soft bed?
He sat up carefully, testing his limbs. The worst of his wounds seemed gone, and the rest had been bandaged.
He looked around and immediately caught sight of Sephiroth sitting in a chair beside the bed to his left. Beside Aeris's bed. His confusion quickly subsided in the face of anger. "What the hell are you doing here?"
The bastard didn't even turn to look at him. "That's hardly the question you should be asking."
"Oh, sorry, let me try again. What are the rest of us doing here, and why the hell are you with us?"
"Jenova," Sephiroth enunciated carefully, as though he was unused to the word, "turned against me. She must have been counting on you to weaken me. If Aeris had not demanded it of me, I would not even have fought her. If Aeris had not been there, I would not have won. It's no wonder Mo... Jenova was so adamant that I kill her." He paused before continuing. "I brought all of you back to the Highwind and released Holy. After that, I do not remember. Someone else must have brought us here."
"Why didn't you just go through with your whole godhood plan after Jenova was out of the way?" Reno demanded.
"How could I have? After all that I have done, Aeris helped me, and it meant something." Sephiroth shook his head. "My plan would have accomplished nothing. I would only have betrayed her."
"So she was right about you after all?" the redhead asked bitterly. "That's just fucking great."
The bastard didn't reply.
Reno got out of bed and strode over to him, wanting to force the man to meet his gaze. "So why are you waiting here?"
Sephiroth's eyes remained fixed on Aeris. "I am waiting to see what she wants of me."
"She didn't say?"
"She said that she didn't know."
"She's being damn soft on the man who raped her."
The bastard frowned at that, and said nothing.
"Why did you do it?"
Still nothing, so Reno reached down and grabbed him by the collar, half-yanking him out of the chair. Then, finally, Sephiroth met his gaze. "Tell me," Reno growled, "why you did it. How you could do it. You look me in the eye and you tell me that."
For a moment longer, Sephiroth was silent, his mouth twisting as though at the thought of something unpleasant. When he spoke, his voice was level, controlled. "I wanted to see her as an object. I wanted to see her as something less than a person. If I could break her, then she would be worthless, and she would not awaken emotions I had long since beaten into silence. I was supposed to be beyond emotion; I could not let her change that."
"That's it?" Reno said incredulously. "You raped her because you didn't want to fall in love? You fucking bastard!" He shoved Sephiroth back, only the man's sense of grace keeping him from toppling over in the chair.
Nanaki started at the outburst and lifted his head, blinking his one eye blearily.
"If you want to kill me," the bastard said coolly, "I suggest you wait. It is Aeris's decision."
"What the hell's wrong with you? How can you sit there and spout this kind of bullshit? You're a worse bastard than I am, and here you are waiting so fucking calmly for Aeris's verdict. Hell, you even know you're wrong. Don't you feel anything? Don't you at least regret doing this to her?"
"Yes. I do regret it. But it doesn't matter if I do. It's too late for me to ask forgiveness. She may not want me dead, but I know she will not want me near her. I will do what she asks of me, no more, no less. That is all there is to this."
"I can't listen to this anymore," Reno growled. "Nanaki, watch him." He started for the door and noticed Vincent was also awake. "You, too, Vince. Make sure he doesn't do anything else he'll regret."
He stormed out into the hall, barely managing not to slam the door. He wanted to wring Sephiroth's neck, but death was too good for that bastard. And whatever Aeris could choose would wind up being too soft, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He took a moment to calm himself before venturing into the next room to see who else was still alive.
"Well, Reeve, how did the rest of us fare?" he asked with a levity that sounded forced even to himself. He took stock of those in the room, and noted who was missing.
Reeve didn't seem startled by his appearance. Probably he had heard the yelling through the wall. "Cloud and Barret are dead," he said tiredly, as though he had said these words enough for them to lose their meaning entirely. "Everyone else seems all right."
"Just two dead?" Reno wondered. "I was pretty sure a lot of us were goners, myself included. Aeris couldn't have healed everyone."
"She managed a lot. Sephiroth healed Cid..."
"What, was he trying to make up for something?"
Reeve shook his head. "I don't know. I asked him because he was the only one who could. I didn't really think he'd do it."
"I really hate him," Reno said. "I don't think Aeris'll be able to dream up a punishment fit for that bastard."
"You need to stop using that word so much. You're starting to sound like Cid."
"It's the only one that even comes close."
"Maybe," the other man conceded.
They were both silent for a moment. Reno couldn't think of much to talk about it. Their job was done, wasn't it? The Planet was safe. Maybe it hadn't come about the way they'd intended, but the Planet was safe. And Sephiroth was still alive, even after killing two of them. There wasn't much to say about that without getting depressed or angry. He couldn't talk about going on from here either, because his plans all involved Aeris, and thinking about her right now instantly reminded him of Sephiroth, waiting for her in the next room.
Yuffie stirred, catching his attention. He went over to her as she pushed herself up on her elbows.
"Where...?" she began, stopping when she recognized the room. She caught sight of Reno and stared at him blankly. "Okay, wait a minute, what happened? Did we win somehow?"
Reno grimaced. "Not exactly. After we went down, Jenova turned on Sephiroth. Aeris helped him kill it, and then the bastard finally changed his mind about destroying the Planet. He got us back to the Highwind, Reeve took care of the rest. The Planet's safe, but... Hell, it's not the story I'd wanted to be telling."
Yuffie needed a moment to take all that in. Then she asked the next question. "Is everyone okay?"
He shook his head. "Cloud and Barret didn't make it."
"Oh. Oh..." She bit her lip. "What... What's Tifa gonna do?"
"I dunno. She hasn't woken up yet."
"So she doesn't even know that he's...?" Yuffie sat up straighter, voice anxious. "But, once she finds out he's- he's dead, she's gonna... She couldn't handle it at all before, and we didn't even know for sure."
Reno had nothing to say to that. Yuffie had said everything.
"So... Wait, what happened to Sephiroth?"
"He's here. Waiting for Aeris to wake up so she can tell him to go fuck himself."
Yuffie frowned, chewing on her lip. She probably didn't like the idea that Sephiroth was that close to her friend.
"Vince and Nanaki are keeping an eye on him," Reno told her, and it was some assurance to himself as well.
She nodded, but her expression didn't change. "Reno, why didn't Aeris tell us that he... you know... Why didn't she say anything?"
He sat down on the edge of her bed. "She didn't want the special treatment. You guys worried about her enough without knowing."
"I guess. But what's she gonna do now?"
"Beyond having the baby, I don't think she knows yet. But I'll look after her."
"Even though she doesn't love you and it's not your baby?"
Reno shrugged as though she hadn't just hit on two very key points that bothered him. "That doesn't matter so much to me," he said.
"Y'know, you're a jerk sometimes, but you seem a lot more dependable than I thought when I first met you."
He snorted. "I'm not doing 'dependable' for anybody but Aeris. Too much work."
That earned him a soft, half-hearted laugh, and then they were both quiet for a moment.
"You're reacting pretty well to all this," Reno remarked, eyeing her speculatively. She was just a kid; shouldn't she have been crying?
"You think I'm not used to people dying?" Yuffie asked sharply. "I grew up during the war. I've seen people die. I saw my mom die. I can handle it."
He let out a sigh. "Yuffie, trust me on this one: you don't wanna be the sort of person who's used to people dying. If you feel like crying, cry. Nobody's gonna say you're weak for crying over your friends' deaths."
She met his gaze uncertainly. "They are... dead, aren't they?" she said, and he could see more clearly the wet sheen in her eyes. A tear slipped down her cheek, and she brushed at it roughly, but more followed and she gave up.
Reno put an arm around her, since there wasn't really anyone else around to do the job. Vincent and Nanaki were both in the other room.
Yuffie made things so simple somehow, the redhead reflected, thinking over what she had said. She wasn't a complicated person to begin with--no deep dark secrets and no mysterious past--and she had a knack for summing up other people's problems in a few sentences, albeit without realizing it.
What was Aeris going to do? She didn't know, and neither did he. She didn't love him, and it wasn't his baby, so by all rights there was nothing in it for him if he stuck with her. But Aeris was different, and he was still hoping she'd come around eventually. Maybe it was a strange time to be optimistic about something, but Aeris was down for the count, so it was his turn for a change.