Chapter 10
It was hard saying goodbye all over again, but this time Tifa knew they'd be able to talk again. Jessie had picked up some old phones at one of the shops and refurbished them, and they left one with Wedge. It was easier leaving Marlene when they could promise to call before bedtime.
Headed south from Kalm, Tifa thought they were still seeing the effects of Midgar. Despite the rains of the other day, the grass was patchy and brown, and no trees grew anywhere on the horizon. The summer heat made it unpleasant for walking, and they didn't talk much during the morning.
They stopped for a rest around midday, and Tifa was grateful for the temporary shade of some passing clouds.
"You just have to walk directly behind Barret," Jessie advised her with a laugh, and Barret gave her a gentle shove.
"I'm really looking forward to those mountains at this point," said Tifa.
"I never imagined the sky could feel so... big," Aeris said. She was lying on her back in the dry grass, staring up at it.
"It really does sometimes," said Tifa. "But just wait until we get clear of Midgar, and night falls."
"What happens then?"
"Well, the stars come out."
"The stars..." Aeris murmured, and she smiled softly. The thought of her expression when she saw them for the first time gave Tifa something to look forward to.
Jessie and Barret were both looking at her curiously. "What?" said Tifa.
"Nothin,'" said Barret. "Come on, we oughtta get movin' again."
But an hour or so later when Aeris was ahead of them chatting with Red, Barret and Jessie fell back to walk in step with her.
"So how are things going with Aeris?" Jessie asked slyly.
"Yeah," Barret chimed in, "seein' stars sounds pretty romantic."
"What--" Had Aeris said something to them? "We're not dating."
"You turned her down?" Jessie said incredulously. She said it loudly enough that one of Red's ears swivelled back, but Aeris seemed oblivious.
"I said I'd take a rain check," Tifa said, pointedly keeping her voice down.
"What were you thinking?" Jessie hissed, at least taking that hint. "When's the next time you figure we're going to spend a few days in a nice town doing nothing?"
"And you're into her, ain't you?"
"I can't believe you're in on this, too," Tifa said. Jessie didn't surprise her, but Barret? Since when did he show interest in her love life?
Barret shrugged. "First time I've seen it since that girl at the weapons shop moved away," he said.
Jessie's eyebrows rose. "Is that why you were always going over there for us? It never made any sense to me, you hate guns."
"Look, that was more than a year ago," Tifa protested.
"You're right," said Jessie. "This is about Aeris, and why you should absolutely go on that date the first chance you get."
"Well- What if she's just being nice?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Tifa faltered. She hadn't meant to say it out loud, but if she was being as obvious about it as they said, maybe Aeris had picked up on that. She'd said she owed Tifa, so maybe it was just... "You know, like a pity date. After she heard about... everything."
"That's ridiculous," Jessie stated. "Have you seen you?"
"I'm pretty sure Zack was her boyfriend," Tifa pointed out.
"So she's bisexual, so what?"
Tifa opened her mouth, closed it again. Right. Having a boyfriend once five years ago didn't really mean anything, did it?
"Teef, a four-year-old could figure out she's into you," Barret said.
"A four-year-old did figure out she's into you," Jessie added.
Tifa looked ahead to where Aeris was walking. "I'm just..."
"Nervous?" Jessie finished, looking at her sympathetically. "That's okay. But it's not gonna get any easier if you put it off."
"All right, all right. First chance we get."
Well, she didn't think they could have a proper date while they were on the road. That gave her until Junon, at least.
It was a weird mix of feelings to be dealing with. There was always that voice in grief, she'd found, that told her she wasn't allowed to feel other things. That to find joy in anything was to betray the people she'd lost and the happiness she'd shared with them. There were so many deaths she had a duty to avenge... But it was a feeling she tried to fight, because she didn't owe that vengeance every part of her. If she ever conquered her enemies, there had to be something left of her afterwards.
Still, it would have been easier if she'd met Aeris earlier, at a time when her life had some semblance of balance. She was adrift right now, with no certainty of what lay ahead.
Or was it good that it came now, to give her something normal to worry about in the midst of everything else? This was the sort of thing she was meant to be dealing with at twenty years old. Not vengeance. Not the fate of the Planet.
The sky clouded over late in the day, which was a relief not only because of the weather but because it meant there would be no stargazing that night. Tifa wanted Aeris to see them, of course, but she didn't think she could have borne the teasing. Not yet.
They called Wedge as they made camp for the night, and spoke to Marlene as they'd promised. They'd made it to Wedge's brother, but Marlene was disappointed it had only taken them a day; she'd gotten to sleep outside on her journey out of Midgar, and the novelty of it hadn't worn off for her. Barret promised her they'd all go camping, once they were back together.
Tifa hadn't slept out under the sky in... a long time. It felt strange, like it was a trick somehow, and really there was some invisible barrier between her and all that wide open emptiness above her. She couldn't say quite how it made her feel--if it frightened her somehow, or made her long for something she couldn't remember.
She turned over onto her side and closed her eyes.
In the morning, they started up into the mountain pass. Tifa had no memory of her journey to Midgar, but Barret had come this way years before. She wasn't sure how far they would retrace his steps, because he'd never told her his hometown. After his words the other day, she worried that he, too, came from a place that no longer existed.
The road through the mountains wasn't a difficult one; it was meant for vehicle traffic, though there wasn't much. Red's ears were sharper than anyone's, and he alerted them to the few approaching cars so they could get off the road and out of sight, in case it was Shinra. Tifa wasn't sure, at this point, if the Shinra were making any effort to track them down. After the massacre at headquarters, they might have bigger problems. But if they happened across each other, there was no way Shinra would just let them go.
As they continued through the pass, they began to see trees, and soon enough, birdsong followed. Tifa hadn't heard that sound in years, and no one argued when she halted the party just to listen. Aeris laid her hand against the trunk of a tree as though she could feel the life in it, and for all Tifa knew, she could.
"This is closer, isn't it?" she said.
"What do you mean?"
"To how things ought to be. But it's still so..." Aeris trailed off, and let her hand drop. "Never mind. Maybe I'm a little overwhelmed. To think I've never seen all this before..."
"It's a lot to miss out on," Tifa agreed.
"If it weren't for the Shinra, it could be like this everywhere," said Barret.
"I wonder if it'll come back," Jessie said. "I mean, if we could shut off every reactor today, right now, do you think that land could recover? What're the chances we'd ever see Midgar looking like this?"
"Well, Aeris could still grow things there," Tifa pointed out, and they all looked to her.
"I think the Planet will need our help," she said. "These are wounds we've made, and they go deep. They'll need to be healed."
Barret scratched his head. "Is that somethin' people like us can do? Or is that, y'know, one o' those powers the Ancients had?"
Aeris smiled at him. "It might be," she admitted, "but I think you can still help. We're all born from the Planet, even humans."
"Never thought I'd be envisioning my future as a gardener," Jessie mused. "I guess there's all sorts of loud flowers I could plant. Like an explosion of color!"
"That's one way to think about it," Tifa laughed. The idea of AVALANCHE retiring to plant flowers did sound pretty absurd... but it also sounded peaceful. She could go for peaceful.
In the afternoon, they stopped for a rest beneath the trees, and Barret motioned towards what might have been a path to higher ground.
"I'm gonna see if I can get an idea o' how far we are through," he said.
"I'll come with you," Tifa decided.
The trail had been made by animals, she thought, rather than people. It was too narrow in places for either one of them, but Tifa didn't mind pushing through the undergrowth. The shade made shifting patterns on their skin, and unseen creatures scampered away from them into the brush. After a short hike, they came out onto a rocky outcropping some hundred feet above the road.
It was hard to pick out the road ahead, but Tifa could see down into the forested valley. Another, gentler mountain range rose in the distance, and she thought Junon lay just beyond that.
Barret was nodding to himself. "Yeah... We must be a little more 'n halfway through. Might hit the valley by tonight."
"I can't say I feel like rushing right now," Tifa said. "This is a great view."
Barret glanced at her. "Yeah? Well, we can just sit for a minute."
They found an obliging rock and sat down overlooking the valley. A cool breeze drifted into their faces, and rustled the leaves overhead.
"The mountains back home aren't anything like this," Tifa said. "The reactor sucked the life out of them a long time ago."
"You dreadin' it?"
"I've been trying not to think about it. We still have to cross the ocean before we get anywhere close to it. It's a long way away."
Barret nodded. "Yeah, well. It's bringin' up some memories for me already, goin' back this way. So if you get there and you need to talk, I'm here."
Tifa looked over at him. His grief, whatever it was, must have been fresh, when last he came through these mountains. "Same goes for you," she said, "if you need to talk."
"I'm all right for now."
Tifa nodded and returned her attention to the valley. "I haven't really thanked you, for supporting me on this."
"What d'you mean?"
"Going after Sephiroth. It's not exactly our M.O."
"Maybe not," Barret conceded. "But like you said, he's dangerous, and he's still Shinra, ain't he? Or, he was. Not exactly sure how it's all connected anymore, but that's part of what we're tryin' to figure out, right?"
"He was Shinra... and that's what led me to AVALANCHE. But I don't know if fighting him has anything to do with saving the Planet."
"I gotta be honest, half the time I don't know if AVALANCHE's got anythin' to do with savin' the Planet. It was vengeance to start... I mean, I wanna make the world better, for Marlene, but I hate the Shinra."
Tifa smiled ruefully. "I know what you mean," she said.
"Anyway, even if this thing with Sephiroth winds up just bein' about revenge... I'll still back you, 'cause I get that. We've been fightin' together for years. I'm not about to let you do it alone now."
"...thanks."
"Besides, I ain't so sure how to fight the Shinra right now. If they'll kill that many people, just to get to us..."
Tifa shook her head. "We can't let that stop us. We both know they'll destroy lives whether we provoke them or not."
"I know! I ain't sayin' we give up. Hell no." Barret smacked his gun arm against the rock for emphasis, scaring away a nearby squirrel. "But maybe we gotta think through some other way. So it's not bad if we're off trackin' down some other lead for now, is what I'm sayin.'"
"I get it," she said. "We needed to get out of Midgar for a while anyway."
"Yeah, exactly."
Tifa leaned back on her hands. "Well," she said, "Aeris did propose a plan where we go punch Rufus in the face. I think that's worth some consideration."
Barret chuckled. "She doesn't look it, but she's got spunk, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I hope you're not mad about us teasin' you. Me an' Jess, we just want you to be happy."
"I know. And I don't know, maybe I could use the pushing. You know that feeling, right? Where you almost feel like you have to be depressed, or you're a bad person."
"Yeah, I know the feelin.' But I gotta remember it's no good for Marlene for me to be like that. We're fightin' for the living, too, Teef."
Tifa nodded. Was it okay to fight for herself then? she wondered, but she didn't ask.
"Anyhow, we oughtta get back to 'em before they start thinkin' somethin's happened to us," Barret reasoned, getting to his feet.
"You can head on back, but I'm gonna stay here for a few minutes longer if you don't mind."
"Yeah, sure. Catch you back down there."
Tifa listened to his noisy passage back through the trees grow fainter, until at last it was just her and the natural sounds of the world around her. She closed her eyes and breathed in the mountain air, knowing Mt. Nibel wouldn't smell anything like this, wouldn't feel anything like this. But maybe, like Aeris said, this was closer to how it was meant to be.
"Hello, Tifa."
Her eyes snapped open. She leapt to her feet and whirled around, and there he was, perched atop another rock not far from her, his long sword planted into the ground between his feet.
"Sephiroth...!" Her eyes darted towards the path. He could block it easily, but Barret hadn't been gone long, and he might hear her if she shouted--
"Are you certain it's wise to alert your friends to my presence?" said Sephiroth. "After all... you don't need all of them, do you?"
Tifa shut her mouth. She glanced behind her; it was a steep slope down from the overlook, but she thought she could climb it. But would that be any escape unless he let her go?
"...what are you doing here?" she asked, clenching her fists in an effort to keep her body from shaking. He hadn't made any move towards her yet.
"I wanted to commend you, for looking after Aeris," he said. "Finally she'll be able to hear the Planet, and awaken to the true calling of our people."
"'Our' people?"
"The Cetra."
Tifa grimaced. "Aeris is nothing like you," she said. What was he trying to gain by a lie like that?
Sephiroth smiled, and it was an even colder expression than she remembered. "Aeris simply hasn't spent enough time in the world, listening to the cries of the Planet and observing the atrocities of the people who crawl upon it."
"You're the one committing atrocities."
"Poor Tifa." Sephiroth stood, pulling his sword from the ground, and Tifa took a step back, but he didn't advance. "You really are unenlightened. But I suppose that's to be expected; we left you in the dark back then, didn't we? You never knew why your village had to be erased from the map."
"There could never be any reason that had to happen."
Sephiroth tilted his head. "Are you sure? Really think about the greatest threat to this Planet... It isn't me."
"You're a threat to the people on it," she stated.
Sephiroth shrugged, as though there was no arguing with that. "Take care of Aeris," he said, and then he turned and disappeared soundlessly into the trees. The brush wasn't disturbed; it was like he wasn't even there.
Tifa's heart thudded in her ears. She wanted desperately to return to her friends, but it took her several minutes to get her feet to move. When they did, she raced down the path, heedless of the branches that scraped against her, and came crashing out into the space where her friends were waiting.
Barret was on his feet already at the noise. "Tifa--?"
"What happened?" Jessie finished.
"Sephiroth," she said breathlessly. "He was here."
Her eyes darted over them. Aeris and Red were there, too, getting to their feet with the others. They were all alarmed by her arrival, but unharmed. Sephiroth hadn't reached them; he had left them alone.
"Sephiroth?" Barret repeated, half-raising his gun arm as he looked behind her up the path. "I was just up there with you!"
"He came after you left," she said. "I thought... But he didn't come this way. Did he?"
Aeris shook her head. "No. We haven't seen him. Are you okay, Tifa?"
Tifa leaned back against the nearest tree and closed her eyes. She nodded. "I'm okay."
"Perhaps you could tell us precisely what happened," Red suggested.
"Give her a minute," said Jessie.
Tifa didn't respond, focusing on catching her breath and calming her racing heart. She must have scared off the birds in her mad dash through the trees, but slowly the birdsong returned. Like nothing had happened. But she hadn't imagined it.
She opened her eyes. "He just showed up," she said, "and started talking to me."
"What did he say?" Aeris asked.
Gods. Aeris. How could Tifa tell her what he had said? There was no way that they were both Cetra, and it was even crazier to suggest that Aeris might ever come to think like he did, but to plant even the smallest doubt in Aeris's mind about who she was, what she was... Tifa couldn't do that to her. She couldn't let Aeris think, even for a second, that she could have some connection to that monster.
"Nothing important," Tifa said, looking away. "I'm sure he just wanted to mess with my head."
"He didn't say anything about what his plans might be?" Jessie said.
Tifa shook her head. "Not really. He... he told me that Nibelheim had to be destroyed, but I was too stupid to understand why. And he said he wanted to congratulate me for escaping the Shinra."
"That's... odd," said Aeris.
"He's a fuckin' nutjob is what it sounds like," Barret said. "The hell's he gotta tell you that for?"
"I don't know," Tifa said. "It'd make more sense if he tried to kill me, right? To finish the job he started five years ago."
"But if he isn't simply crazy," said Red, "then it stands to reason he must want something from you. Which is troubling."
Not from her, but from Aeris. He couldn't really expect her to turn on them, so what did he want from her? Something to do with her powers?
"Well, he didn't tell me," Tifa said, "and I don't think we're going to figure it out on our own. I think we should just forget about it for now."
Aeris was watching her with a frown. Did she suspect Tifa was holding something back, or was she just worried? Hard to say, especially when Tifa already felt guilt twisting her stomach over lying.
"Yeah... all right," said Barret. "I'm just glad you're all right, Tifa."
"Did you want to rest here a while longer?" Jessie asked.
"No. I'd rather just get moving again."
She didn't want to stay so close to where he'd shown up, even though he could just as easily follow them, or be waiting to ambush them farther down the road. She didn't want her fear to paralyze her.
Twilight was falling as they came down into the valley, and they made camp out of sight of the road. They made a fire, and Tifa cooked, because it gave her a task to focus on. There was conversation, but she had trouble following it. She was still listening for an approach--as if she'd hear a warning when she hadn't before.
"Tifa, look."
Aeris's voice drew her out of her narrow focus, and she looked over. Aeris was pointing skyward.
Tifa hadn't really noticed earlier, but the sky was clear, and the trees were sparser here; in the patch of deepening blue above them, a few points of light now shone.
"The stars are coming out," Tifa murmured.
"There was a bigger clearing back that way," said Jessie, "if you wanted to get a better look once it's darker."
"What do you think, Tifa?" said Aeris. "You want to join me?"
Tifa knew they were trying to find a way to distract her, to get her to relax after earlier. But she could also tell that Aeris was genuinely excited, bouncing a little on her toes as she waited for an answer.
"Sure," Tifa said.
They ate, and whatever they chatted about, Aeris was constantly looking overhead. All of them were; it had been a long time since any of them had seen the stars.
After they had cleaned up, Barret made ready to call Wedge, but Tifa didn't want to talk to them tonight. She didn't want Marlene to pick up on something in her voice, and start to worry. Instead she bade Barret give them her love, and walked with Aeris back through the trees to the clearing nearer to the road.
The sky opened up above them, strewn with lights, and Aeris walked into the center of the clearing, starlight catching in the materia in her hair. She stretched out on the ground and patted the earth beside her. "You, too, come on."
Tifa joined her, and glanced over at her face. It wasn't peace that she saw there, but wonder. A thirst to know the world's beauty. Tifa turned her head to look up.
"There are even more than this, you know," she said. It was still early in the night, and a crescent moon held the deepest dark at bay.
"Really? More than this?"
"Mmhm."
"Do you think any of those stars out there has a planet like ours?" Aeris wondered. "There must be, right? It's so vast..."
"I've never thought about it, but I imagine there must be. It's... too much emptiness otherwise."
"No, it can't be emptiness. But, I suppose they might be very far away."
"Yeah. Who knows, maybe there's someone out there at the other end of the sky, wondering the same thing."
"That's a nice thought," Aeris said, and Tifa could hear the smile in her voice. "Say, don't people wish on stars? I think I've heard that before."
"Shooting stars," Tifa said.
"What are those?"
"Well... I think they're actually comets, but they're still far away enough it looks like a flash of light streaking across the sky."
"Have you ever seen one?"
Tifa was quiet for a moment. She could remember a different night, what felt like ages ago. It had been colder then, not yet spring, and a moonless night had let the stars come out in full. It was at once a silly childhood moment from before she'd really known herself, and a precious memory.
She could talk about it, couldn't she? What good did it do to hide away even the things worth remembering? Was she letting Sephiroth erase them, too?
"Yeah," she said. "It was about seven years ago. The boy next door called me out to the well in the middle of town. He said he was leaving, but he promised he'd come rescue me if I was ever in trouble."
"It sounds like he had a crush on you," Aeris said.
"I don't know. Maybe. I did think it was what romance was supposed to be like. I mean, we made a promise and there was a shooting star and everything. After he left home, I imagined I liked him for a while... But now I think back on it, and I'm just relieved he left. A lot of my friends left, before it happened."
"They left for Midgar, right? Did you ever look any of them up?"
Tifa let out a slow breath. "How could I?" she said. "I didn't want to be the one to tell them... Or worse, what if I couldn't track any of them down?" It would have been like she really was the only one who had made it out, the only one left.
"You wanted to imagine they were all okay somewhere," Aeris said.
"Yeah."
"It sounds lonely, though. You did know people in the city, but you went it alone anyway."
"It's what I wanted at the time. It's hard to explain."
"I don't think I could've done it," Aeris said. "I've never been that close to a lot of people, but I've never been on my own either."
"That's fine. I'm glad you haven't been. It can't have been easy either, going through what you did."
"I don't really think about it," Aeris said, and Tifa wondered if that were true. "Mom gave me a pretty normal life."
Tifa turned her head to glance at her. "And yet you seemed pretty eager to join us."
"Maybe normal got boring!" Aeris laughed, but her voice grew serious again. "I wanted to do something, you know? The Planet's hurting, and I'm a Cetra. I'm meant to be protecting it, somehow."
The greatest threat to this Planet...
Tifa forced Sephiroth's words out of her mind.
"I hope," she said, "that what we're doing really can help it."
"It can. It will. I'm sure of it."
"How?"
"It's just a feeling. Like I'm in the right place."
Tifa looked back at the stars overhead. "I wish I had your certainty," she said.
She felt the touch of Aeris's fingers against hers, gently twining them together. Aeris gave her hand a light squeeze. "Maybe you can borrow a little of mine," she said.
Tifa closed her fingers around Aeris's. There was no shooting star overhead, but by now she thought maybe it was better to be... grounded.