Chapter 8
At last they reached the top of the cliffs, where the incline softened into a slope leading up to a narrow ridge some distance ahead. She could feel something cancerous beyond it, yet for all the Planet's keening, she couldn't identify it. There was hardly any snow here, as though precipitation, too, forsook this place, a fact which failed to please her as Sephiroth dropped her unceremoniously upon the rocky and frozen earth.
Aeris winced but began to climb to her feet, stopping when she saw her companion sit down on a nearby rock. She settled herself back down on a smoother patch of ground and asked, "Tired?"
He only glanced at her.
"I guess you must be," she went on. "That was a much harder climb than Corral Valley."
No response to that at all. His silence left her listening to the Planet's anguish, and she had to take a moment to swallow it down before she attempted another question.
"How much farther do we have to go?"
"The crater is just beyond here," Sephiroth answered with a nod towards the far side of the ridge. "There is still a ways to travel, but I can be where I need to be by nightfall."
"You'll be there?"
"You will not accompany me much farther."
"Then we'll be seeing Cloud and the others today?" Aeris concluded hopefully.
His expression changed only slightly, adding a hint of malice to his words. "Perhaps you will see them tomorrow, if you're lucky."
She frowned. Clearly he meant to abandon her soon, but beyond that she couldn't discern his intentions. Just that he wouldn't harm her greatly at this point, and she was still far from broken.
Aeris got to her feet and walked across the ridge to have a look at the crater below. She could feel Sephiroth's eyes on her as she moved. She stopped when the Planet's wound came into sight, her eyes widening in horror. Before her stretched a huge gash in the Planet's skin, a festering wound that had not even scabbed over yet. At its center, the Planet's lifeblood worked in vain to mend the gash. The Lifestream whirled and twisted, clearly visible for miles, all the while failing to heal anything.
"Holy..." she breathed. So this was what it screamed about.
Too many leeches, the Planet whispered apologetically in undercurrent to its pain. I lack the strength.
Jenova and the Shinra... Aeris thought back to it. Once they're gone, will you be able to mend this?
Don't know.
"Meteor will be worse than this," Sephiroth said from beside her, making her jump. "This is merely a scratch."
"A scratch?" the Cetra asked indignantly, turning to face him. "You call this a scratch? Do you have any idea how much pain this causes the Planet?"
He shrugged, meeting her gaze coolly. "Why should I care? The Planet has done nothing for me."
"Not nothing," she told him. "It gave you a soul."
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "Did it really?"
"Of course; it gives one to everyone and everything that lives on it."
He scoffed. "Well, it must have skipped me."
I did not skip him, the Planet remarked, sounding offended. Rather liked him at the time.
Aeris actually smiled at that. "There," she said. "The Planet says it gave you one."
"Planets really shouldn't lie."
She frowned. "It can't lie."
"Anyone can lie," Sephiroth answered lightly, as though the whole conversation were a joke to him. "It isn't very hard. You do it all the time, and yet your friends thought you couldn't."
"But the Planet isn't like people," she argued. "The way it communicates, even... There's no room for lies in that."
"I am sure there is."
"You don't understand."
"Perhaps I don't," he admitted, "but neither do I care."
"You don't even know what you're trying to kill!" Aeris exclaimed.
He shook his head. "Wrong. What I am going to kill. I think you will agree that this planet could not survive Meteor."
"No, it couldn't, but Meteor won't come. You can't call it here."
Sephiroth's gaze turned cold and almost derisive. "You still think Holy will come to save it? You still think you've done your duty and summoned a protector for your precious planet?"
She managed to meet that gaze, and she used her anger to make her words sound firm. "I have done my duty in that respect, but there's still more I can do. I can still stop you."
His mouth settled into a frown, and plain harshness replaced the derision in his eyes. "Your materia. Give it to me."
"What?" she asked, her false confidence quickly fading.
"The White Materia in your hair. You have had it long enough."
Aeris began to back away from him as a sudden anxiety gripped her. "But... You don't need it for anything."
"What, you think I plan on using it?" he asked contemptuously.
She shook her head.
"Well? Give it to me."
"I won't let you have it." When he held out a hand, she turned and bolted. She knew she would not get far. She knew he would catch her. She knew he would take it from her. But she could not let it happen so easily, without her defiance.
Sephiroth caught her by her arm, but she whirled, slashing at him with the knife she had taken from Holzoff's house. She felt the sickly sweet satisfaction of cutting through flesh, and he released his grip on her arm only to snatch the knife from her grasp. She had already turned to run again.
This time he grabbed the tail end of her braid, yanking her backwards. She heard the whisper of the blade, and suddenly he let her go. She stumbled, regained her balance, and whirled to face him, feeling strangely light, as though she were missing something.
She blinked.
The braided length of her hair lay on the ground, severed where the ribbon had tied it. Sephiroth held the ribbon, as well as the White Materia she had fastened to it. After he removed the materia, he let the ribbon flutter from his grasp.
Aeris lifted a hand to her hair, finding the locks uneven, many not even past her ears. Her bangs reached farther than the rest of her hair. "You..."
"Yes, I cut your hair," he interrupted in a clipped and disinterested tone. "I thought you valued the White Materia more...?"
"I do," she said defensively, and nearly went on to demand it back. She stopped herself, and shook her head, no longer feeling the familiar weight of her braid swinging back and forth with the motion. She took a deep breath. Focus on trivial things; don't let him see how much it hurts you; don't let him know you can't stand the thought of him having it. "Well, what now? Are we moving on?"
Sephiroth nodded, and she thought he should have been satisfied, but his face lacked expression. He led her silently down the slope, her materia still clasped in one hand, the knife in the other. After only a few steps, however, he flung the knife aside.
Aeris hurried to pick it up and tuck it back into her coat.
Cloud helped Vincent to shut the door when he returned, and the two of them joined the others who had gathered in the back room to assess the situation.
"Nanaki, you said they were here six hours ago?" he asked first off.
The feline nodded. "Approximately."
"So if we hurried, we might be able to catch up to them..."
"And then we'd keel over from exhaustion when we did," Tifa reminded him.
Cloud nodded. "Yeah, I know. Actually, I was thinking we should rest up a while here, since there might not be many chances to later on."
"We could sure as hell use a decent night's sleep," Cid commented meaningfully.
"Especially with the cliffs up ahead," Nanaki added.
"Yo, did you say more cliffs?" Barret asked.
The feline glanced at him. "Yes. The base of Gaea's Cliffs is not far from here. I believe they are much more difficult to scale than those at Corral Valley."
"Damn, man..." the big man muttered. "Why there gotta be more cliffs..."
"Does this mean we're gonna split up again?" Yuffie asked.
"If we want to catch up with Sephiroth, it's probably the best way to go," Cait Sith put in.
Cloud nodded his agreement. "If it's all right with everyone, that's what we'll do."
"Don't got no problems with splittin' up, just with them cliffs," Barret grumbled.
"Save yer goddamn complainin' for tomorrow," Cid told him. "You ain't climbin' nothing now, unless you planned on sleepin' up top." He jerked a thumb towards the ladder where Yuffie sat, leading up to the loft.
"Uh-uh, I'm sleeping up here," the ninja protested. "I claimed it already."
Cloud sighed and got to his feet. "I'm going to sleep in the other room. You guys figure out what you're doing quick, 'cause we're not going to stay here that long."
"I thought you said we'd get to rest up!" Yuffie exclaimed.
"Six hours is 'decent,' isn't it?" he said over his shoulder. A few curses followed him as he passed through the doorway.
Tifa joined him as he was unfolding his sleeping bag on the floor. "Nobody seems to remember there's a couch in here," she said.
"I think they just don't want to be in the same room where the body was."
"That, too. Especially for Nanaki." She sat down on the couch. "It's comfy though. You don't mind if I take it?"
He shook his head. "Go ahead."
"Thanks."
He sat down on his sleeping bag and began tugging off his boots. Tifa sat still and silent, and it seemed like she was watching him. He tried not to look at her.
"Are we going to split up the same way as last time?" she asked after several moments.
"Probably," he answered, setting his boots against the wall near the fireplace. That was another reason to choose this room. The fact that he knew Tifa wasn't too squeamish to sleep here was the third. "Cid seems like a good enough leader," he added.
"If you don't mind the cursing," she offered jokingly. After a pause, she reached down to unlace her own boots, which she must have bought back in Snow Village. She had always worn those red sneakers before. Red was a good color for her, he thought, but she never seemed to wear it much.
Tifa lay back on the couch. "I hope we find her tomorrow. I hope she's still okay."
"Me, too."
There was silence between them, and silence in the other room now, from what he could tell. Vincent had since moved from the door frame where he'd been standing earlier. Cloud lay down and stared upwards. After a moment, he glanced towards the couch. "Tifa?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you think... When we find Sephiroth, will I... will I even be able to fight him?"
She didn't answer right away, and from this angle, it was hard for him to make out her expression. "I don't know, Cloud. But I'll be with you, so you just... Don't worry about it."
He nodded a bit. "Right. Thanks, Teef. I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Mm." He couldn't be sure, but she sounded like she was smiling. "Goodnight, Cloud."
"Goodnight, Tifa."
They had come down the steepest part of the crater, and now she could see the whirling tendrils of the Lifestream more clearly. This close, they seemed to form a great wall of green, circling the center of the Planet's wound. The wall stretched far upwards into the sky, so that she had to crane her neck to see where it finally thinned to wisps and ended.
A mist from the Lifestream stretched faintly across the ground ahead, and she stopped. Sephiroth strode on, paying her no heed, his feet leaving eddies in the mist. After a moment, though, he paused and glanced back at her, arching an eyebrow in question.
"I want to wait for my friends here," Aeris told him.
"And you expect me to agree to that and go on?" he queried.
"Why not?"
"You know the reason."
She shook her head, a part of her still surprised at the lightness of her hair. "Someone like you has to be broken to break people, Sephiroth."
His gaze darkened. "What do you mean by that?"
"All you're capable of is inflicting the same wounds on others as were given to you. Some people aren't strong enough; your wounds would break them. But others... others are just as strong, some are stronger, and--"
"Enough."
"--you can't break them. You can't break me."
His eyes narrowed. "Oh, you think you are stronger than me?"
Aeris met his gaze steadily. "Yes."
"I will prove you wrong."
"Then do it. Hurt me, break me, shatter me. Grind the pieces of my soul into a fine powder and try, if you wish, to use it as a salve to heal your own. It won't work."
Sephiroth scoffed again. "You seem to suffer under a delusion that I am nearly broken myself."
"You are," she insisted, "but I think you can still heal. You just have to let yourself want it."
He turned towards her fully and took several steps back from the mist, leaving only a pace between them. "You are a foolish girl indeed. It is too late to alter my course. Meteor will do what I wish. The very planet which denied me a soul to begin with will suffer for it, and I will have all the Spirit Energy I need."
"...and what will become of the rest of us?"
"Either you will die and become a part of me, or you will lie broken at my feet. I do not care so long as there is no one left to stand in my way."
"What will you do then, once you're a god?"
"What does it matter, Cetra? You will be dead or broken by then, past caring in either case."
"When so much is at stake, it's worth trying to understand you, if only so I know how to stop you. I want to know why you're doing this, so I can persuade you not to. I know you think it's ridiculous, especially now that I've told you, but..." She trailed off, but when she spoke again, she held the same conviction in her voice. "You don't really want to be doing this, do you? Have you ever really known what you wanted?"
"For you to quit asking such stupid questions," he answered flatly.
"No. Answer me seriously. What do you want?"
Sephiroth was playing with something in the palm of his hand, and he took a moment to answer. "This world is full of lies and corruption, Aeris. I should know. Humans are worthless, and you might as well be one of them. All your ideals and hopes--what difference do they make?"
"So you want to destroy it all?"
"Of course."
"And that's all?"
"Yes."
Slowly, Aeris shook her head. "I don't believe it. You were as human as anyone else once, and I don't think you've changed so much."
"I have. That 'human' part of me is gone, and all that remains is contempt."
"You're only saying that. You'd like to believe it, but it isn't true."
"You are ever hopeful that I will change for you, aren't you?"
"I am," she answered, almost surprised that it was true.
He looked back down at his hand, spreading his fingers so that she could see he held the White Materia. Then his mouth twisted into a frown, and he threw the orb into a rocky outcropping, sending after it a spell of a sort that she could neither see nor comprehend. She cried out, stretching out one hand towards it, as if she could stop the motion.
The White Materia shattered between the rock and the spell, and the pieces fell to the ground.
Aeris gaped, her mind reeling. "How... how could you?"
"That," Sephiroth growled, "is what I think of you and your idiotic hope--easily crushed and utterly worthless."
"But... you can't..."
"Can't what? Crush hope? If you still do not believe me, I can easily show you."
Before she could even attempt to flee, he had her pressed against the rock. He left her hands free, but she knew they were useless. Her eyes were wide in disbelief, but deep down, part of her had expected this of him. Perhaps that was why she had tried to convince herself otherwise for so long.
Sephiroth pulled the knife from her coat, somehow knowing exactly where she kept it, and simply cut her clothes off of her, the blade always a hair's breadth from piercing her skin.
Aeris stared at him, and he did not even bother to meet her gaze.
She lay naked where he had left her, bruised and bleeding from his violence. She had tried to remain limp, tried not to respond, tried not to give him the satisfaction of screaming, but she had failed. She had wavered between a futile, tiring struggle and actually succumbing to the desires he awoke in her body. She had, during the course of her violation, screamed out his name in both terror and pleasure. She had begged him to stop, and begged him not to stop.
He had known she would respond this way. He had known. She'd let him manipulate her, leading herself to the point where she had opened herself to receive what scant kindness he had offered. She had stripped away her own walls, to try to reach him.
He had known she would do that, hadn't he? And now he had taken advantage of all her attempts at compassion. He had let her kind words fall into a void and callously ripped the heart that birthed them to shreds.
She could see Sephiroth out of the corner of her eye, fully clothed and on his feet. She knew he did not spare her even a glance; she couldn't feel his gaze.
"Do what you like," he told her, his voice completely devoid of emotion, as if nothing at all had passed between them. "I will complete my mission."
"You're leaving me?" Aeris managed.
"Yes."
"But... I'm not broken yet. You're not finished with me."
"I will finish you later."
She heard nothing more. She had never been able to hear his footfalls. She could not move, could not lift her head to see if he had gone, if she was really and truly alone. She certainly could not try to follow him if he was leaving. The cold crept across her skin and through it, driving away the heat of passion and cruelty, compassion and pain, that had coursed through her veins.
At length, she did manage to sit up, wincing.
She had been so wrong about him. Nothing she had ever said had made him falter in the slightest. Every kindness he had ever shown her had been a pretense. It had all been calculated--the way he had held her, the moments when he had seemed almost to believe her, the way he had sometimes smirked, not in malice but in genuine amusement.
Had anything he had ever said or done really been true?
Aeris shook her head, wrapping her arms about herself. No, this was not the time to think about that. Right now all she could focus on was survival. Cloud and the others were less than a day behind, if Sephiroth's remarks were to be trusted, so she would have to hold on until they reached her.
The clothes she had borrowed from Holzoff were thoroughly shredded, but she drew the pieces about herself, hugging them close. It wouldn't be enough, like this. The air still found her skin through the maze of tears. If only she had some way of lighting herself a fire. Materia would be a godsend.
Her attention drifted then, and she crawled slowly to where the fragments of the White Materia lay, picking them up one by one and laying them in her palm.
"Oh, Holy... Planet... I'm sorry..."