Chapter 37
They left the inn early the next morning. Vincent and Lucrecia were ready before anyone else, and Tifa thought they might have been out all night, but she didn't ask. It was their own business.
A line of people waited at the docks, and their party stood out as much as they had in the tour group over the Corel mountains. Although the ship wasn't a military vessel, Tifa suspected most of its passengers worked for Shinra in one way or another, and she looked at the faces around her, seeing vacationing managers and off-duty officers.
Aeris made cheerful small talk with the people ahead of them, as though it hadn't occurred to her, or maybe it didn't bother her. She was in good spirits this morning, glad to be on their way, and... maybe Tifa had something to do with it, too.
Lucrecia saw them off as the line began to board the ship, her eyes scanning each of their faces.
"I had ambition once, too," she said, "to change the world... or so I thought. Looking back now, I think it was more selfish than that. A desire for recognition, greatness even... I can tell your endeavor isn't like that at all. I wish you luck in it."
"Thank you," said Aeris.
"Do you know where you're going from here?" Jessie asked her.
"Yes," said Lucrecia. "You needn't worry about me. I'll contact you when I can, with whatever help I can give you."
Tifa couldn't bring herself to express any gratitude to this woman, but she nodded. "We'll be expecting it."
"And look after Vincent for me, won't you?"
"Sure," said Tifa. That, she could do.
They went on to board the ship, but Vincent lingered behind, long enough that Tifa wondered if he might stay after all. At the last call, she watched him release Lucrecia's hand and make his way up the gangplank.
"Hey, let's go check out our rooms," said Aeris from beside her.
"I'll join you in a little bit," Tifa promised.
Aeris followed her gaze to where Vincent now stood against the rail, eyes on the dock. "Mm. We will have to keep an eye on him, won't we? So the brooding doesn't get too intense."
"Something like that."
Aeris gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'll meet you at our room."
Tifa watched her go with a smile, and for a little while, she stayed put. The ship began to pull away from port, and she watched as Costa del Sol receded. One by one, the other passengers who had stayed to watch left to get settled, and at last even the spot where Lucrecia had been standing fell out of sight.
Vincent hadn't moved, and Tifa went over to join him. His face wasn't so expressionless as usual; he looked... forlorn.
"You all right?" she asked him.
"She's going with them," he said.
"What?"
"You suspect that the Turks have been following us again. I believe you're right."
Tifa could ask him if he'd seen them, but that wasn't what concerned her. "What do you mean, she's going with them?"
"In hopes of gaining access to Hojo's lab," Vincent explained. "She... wants to learn what he did to me."
"But that's..." She shook her head. "They won't just trust her to do whatever she wants. There's every chance she'll be a prisoner."
"She understands that."
Tifa wasn't sure what to make of the decision. Lucrecia wouldn't be able to compromise their mission; she only knew they were headed north. But what else might she give the Shinra, about Jenova, about Sephiroth? What might they push her into doing, and would she be able to help them as she'd promised? This was a riskier action than Tifa had expected from her, and she didn't know how far Lucrecia's bravery would carry her.
She glanced at Vincent, and kept that doubt to herself; she was sure he had faith in her intentions. "You must be worried," she said instead.
"Yes," he said. "I know that... it's her own decision. To take that from her would be to disrespect her. But, I wish there was a way for me to return to Shinra with her, to protect her."
"Well... I hope she knows what she's doing. But whatever else she is, she's smart, right?"
Vincent nodded. "And this is where she wanted me to be."
"With us?" Tifa wondered. "What about you, is that what you want?"
"I made a commitment to you all."
"I appreciate that, but it's not quite what I meant."
Vincent was quiet for a moment. "...I can't learn the truth unless I go with you. Whether Sephiroth is behind this or not... If he isn't, she'll be relieved to know. If he is... I can't allow her to be indirectly responsible for the end of the world."
So he was doing it for her now. Tifa wasn't surprised, but she said, "I'd like to think you don't want the world to end for its own sake."
At that, he finally looked at her, meeting her gaze. "No," he said, "I don't want the world to end. But, are you doing none of this for Aeris?"
Tifa opened her mouth, and then smiled wryly. "I like to think I'm doing it for all of us, but..." He had a point; somewhere along the line, Aeris had moved into the forefront. Tifa wanted to support her, wanted to make the world safe enough for all of her aspirations.
"You may not like Lucrecia," said Vincent, looking back out at the distant shore, "but I think you understand my feelings exactly."
Tifa nodded. Maybe she hadn't said the words, but... Looking at Vincent, she wondered how it would leave her, if she lost Aeris. And he'd already lost Lucrecia once. "I don't think Holy acts right away," she offered, "so maybe there'll be time to go back for her."
Vincent nodded without saying anything, and Tifa started to draw back from the railing.
"I'm gonna go check out the rooms," she said. "They've probably decided all the arrangements by now, so you should figure out later where they've stuck you."
"I will," he said.
Tifa left him to his thoughts, hefted up her bag, and headed down to the passenger deck. As she'd expected, everything had been settled in her absence, largely by Yuffie's declaration that she didn't want to room with her and Aeris because she wouldn't be able to handle any 'grossness' while at sea. They were three to a room, and no one had really argued it, letting her room with Jessie and Nanaki while Barret tentatively took the space with Tifa and Aeris, and that was fine with Tifa. She wasn't quite ready for them to... have their own room. Not quite.
That left Vincent with Zack and Cloud, and Tifa did hope he wouldn't pull another all-nighter. Maybe Zack would even make a mission out of befriending him, too.
Except for Yuffie and Nanaki, everyone wanted to explore the ship, and it was nice to have the freedom to this time. Compared to the cargo ship, everything was a small luxury. The rooms were cramped, but they didn't share them with strangers. The tables in the dining hall were smaller, laid neatly with table cloths, and there was more choice in the menu. There were even a few lounges to provide space inside to relax.
"A piano!" Aeris exclaimed as they entered one of them. Sure enough, an upright piano sat against the far wall. A couple tourists were sitting nearer the door, and glanced at them as they passed.
"You play?" Tifa wondered, following Aeris across the room.
Aeris turned to face her on reaching the piano and shook her head. "Not at all. But I thought you might. There was one in your room, wasn't there?"
"Yeah," said Tifa. She lifted the fallboard and let her fingers rest lightly atop the keys. "My mom taught piano, so, she used to teach me, too, but I wasn't great about practicing. They moved the piano into my room hoping it'd help. But that was just a few months before..."
"I see," said Aeris. "It's been a really long time then?"
"Well... I kept it up for a while. But I haven't played since Nibelheim, and I was already getting out of practice by then."
"That's too bad."
Tifa glanced around, but there was nothing to tell her she shouldn't, so why not? She still remembered a few songs, probably. She slid onto the piano bench, and her fingers searched out a starting position. She cautiously played a few notes, but the sound was richer and louder than she remembered, and she stopped, letting the notes fade. After a moment, she started again. Her fingers tripped over the notes, her time was off. The tune was recognizable, but it didn't sound how it was supposed to.
Aeris draped her arms around Tifa's shoulders from behind. "Doesn't sound so bad to me," she said softly, her voice close beside Tifa's ear. Tifa swallowed, remembering what she'd said before about having time to themselves here.
"Is it okay," she wondered, "if we just spend our time on the ship like this?"
"What do you mean?" Aeris asked, knowing she didn't mean the piano.
"...out of the room. Barret's not going to be there all the time."
"Oh..." Aeris withdrew and moved to sit down beside Tifa on the bench, catching her eye. "Of course it's okay. I'm always happy to spend any time with you."
"It's just, I know you want to."
"Sure, but it's no good unless both of us do."
"It's not that I don't want to..."
"...you're just not ready," Aeris finished. "I understand."
Tifa wondered if she really did, when she seemed so sure of herself. So comfortable and secure in the moment, not afraid of losing control... Maybe Jessie was right, that Tifa was building it up too much in her mind, but she knew how Aeris could make her feel with just a look or a few words. It was intense.
Aeris bumped shoulders with her. "You want to play the world's worst duet?" she asked.
Tifa smiled. "Sure," she said.
They spent the morning doing not much of anything that way. There wasn't much to do aboard the ship besides relax, but Tifa could only take so much relaxing, and it had been a while since they'd had this much downtime.
There was nowhere on the ship with the space for her to train without at least a few of the passengers gawking at her, but it was a routine she'd been too long away from, and she decided to do it anyway. Aeris seemed more than content to watch, too, at first. But the next day when Tifa announced her intent, she fetched her staff so they could train together.
Zack took note, too. When Tifa cautioned him that waving swords around probably wouldn't go over as well, he nodded thoughtfully like he'd decided to give it up, but later found someone's abandoned hat and set it out like he and Cloud were performers. They collected a small audience and a couple hundred gil before the crew came by to tell them it was against the rules. The next day, Zack made a sign announcing a 'free swordplay show,' and enough passengers protested that the crew threw up their hands and left them to it.
Meanwhile Jessie and Barret joined Tifa's sessions for some hand-to-hand practice, and they became more lesson than training. They didn't attract so many onlookers as Zack and Cloud's sparring sessions, but on their last day aboard, a man approached Tifa to ask her if she was a professional trainer, and if she might be interested in clientele of a 'higher echelon.' Tifa threw his card in the ocean at her first opportunity.
They got into port the evening of the third day, and the chill in the air felt like they'd leapt ahead into the middle of autumn. They found an inn for the night, but took the time to ask around after Sephiroth. Just earlier that day, someone said, they'd seen a man in black headed west.
But when morning came, to Zack's great confusion, they ignored the pass through the western mountains that would have taken them into the snowfields beyond and instead pressed on due north, following Aeris's direction.
They reached some sort of excavation site later in the morning, and Tifa couldn't help staring as they found themselves walking past the skeletons of creatures larger than she'd ever thought existed, bigger even than the dragons on Mt Nibel. The people camping here had stretched canvas between the gaps in some enormous rib cage, turning the bones into their ceiling beams.
The excavators turned and stared in turn at the party winding through their camp, but no one spoke to them until Aeris approached the woods at its northern border.
"Hey, wait! You're not just going right in, are you?"
Everyone paused except for Aeris, who had grown more and more single-minded and didn't seem to have heard him. Tifa caught her hand, and she looked back in confusion.
"This forest dangerous or somethin'?" asked Barret.
"Very," said the woman. "It's called the Sleeping Forest. It puts a fog over the mind of anyone who enters, so if you go in, you might never find your way out."
Tifa looked to Aeris, who'd been so certain of her every step.
"We'll be all right," she said. "I can find my way through."
The woman regarded her skeptically. "I wouldn't risk it if I were you. If you're that anxious to see the Forgotten City, you should get your hands on a Lunar Harp first. They're kind of rare, but if you talk to Conners down below, he might know where you could find one."
"We don't need it," Aeris insisted.
"You might be fine," said Yuffie, "but what about that brain fog thing hitting the rest of us?"
Aeris looked down at Tifa's hand, still joined with hers, and gave it a swing. "We can all hold hands. I'll lead you through."
"Will we retain enough presence of mind to hold on?" asked Nanaki, his tail flicking. Never mind that he didn't have any hands, likely placing him at the end of the line, having to trust entirely to someone else.
"He's got a point," said Jessie. "If it's that bad, maybe we should tie ourselves together?"
The woman who'd tried to warn them shook her head at them, but gave up on dissuading them and wished them luck as they dug out a length of rope.
Tifa didn't feel it at first, and she even felt a little silly, walking through the trees with a rope tied around her waist. The forest wasn't even dense. There was no undergrowth, and the trees were spaced far enough apart that sunlight filtered down through their canopy, playing over Aeris's hair and shoulders ahead of her. It was peaceful, even beautiful, the sort of place Tifa imagined would make hearing the Planet's voice even easier.
Maybe she almost did hear something... Like a whisper, on the edge of hearing. She turned her head, thinking she saw something moving past in the distance. Just trees. Everything was uncannily still, she realized. The air never stirred, and the only rustle of leaves came from Barret's head brushing past a low-hanging branch. There should have been utter silence save for their footsteps over the ground, and yet...
Tifa blinked. She felt as though she'd lost a moment, and the trees had shifted somehow without her noticing. Were they going the same way?
"Aeris, did we turn around?"
"No," said Aeris. "Just trust me."
And Tifa did, but she couldn't shake the sense that they were walking in circles. Or, that the forest itself was spinning about them, unstable and untethered. Tifa closed her eyes for a while in an attempt to ward off that dizzy feeling, but when she opened them, she realized with a flash of alarm that she couldn't remember where they were going.
"Guys, I think we're lost," she heard Jessie say from a little ways behind her. "Let's stop for a minute."
"No," said Nanaki. "Aeris knows the way."
"Man, this rope is driving me crazy, though," said Yuffie.
"Don't take it off," Aeris said sharply, throwing a look back over her shoulder.
"How much further is it to... where we're going?" Tifa asked.
"Not far now," Aeris assured her. "Hang in there."
Tifa nodded, but she had lost any sense of how long they'd been walking. The light seemed to fall down through the leaves in exactly the same angle, as though the sun hadn't shifted since they'd entered the forest. She wasn't tired exactly, but her body felt sluggish, like it moved through something thicker than air.
There was a light up ahead. The canopy above parted, and Tifa squinted at the daylight, which felt so much brighter than it should have. Aeris led them a short ways up a stony path and encouraged them to sit down for a rest.
Tifa lost time again. Her head cleared suddenly, like jolting awake from the edge of sleep. She looked to Aeris.
"That was... How long were we in there?"
"A couple hours, I think," said Aeris. "Are you feeling all right?"
Tifa nodded. "I think so. But the whole thing is sort of... slipping away. Like it was a dream or something."
"Yeah," said Jessie, "that was weird. Didn't care for it."
"Guess that's why most people don't come this route," said Zack.
Aeris smiled ruefully. "Sorry. We should be all right now."
Tifa realized she was hungry, so once they got the ropes off again, they rested a while longer outside the forest and ate. Not certain what lay ahead, they made an early call to Marlene. It was one of those days where they couldn't tell her much; they hadn't reached the city yet, and they didn't want to scare her with stories about huge skeletons or sleeping forests. It was about mid afternoon when they got moving again.
The rocky path led up to the crest of a hill, and an expansive valley opened up before them. Tifa had never seen anything like it; it was as though a part of the ocean floor had been pushed up long ago, exposing a vast coral reef to the air. She couldn't see anything from this vantage that looked like a city, but there was a strange path leading down into the valley, man-made but segmented in a way that reminded her of the spine of the huge animal back at the excavation camp.
As they descended into the valley, Tifa couldn't help feeling like they weren't meant to be here. Like even the air itself was something no one had breathed since the time of the Ancients.
There was water in the valley, as though the ocean hadn't left it entirely, a series of still lakes and pools. The path wound between them and bridged over them, and at last Tifa could see buildings ahead. Many of them had collapsed in the millennia since the Cetra must have abandoned the city, and at first they passed only the remnants of foundations.
Ahead of them, though, rose an enormous forest of white coral which Tifa had seen from above. They had lost the sun behind the mountains to the west, throwing the valley into shadow, but its rays still caught the uppermost boughs of the coral in a glowing halo. Tifa glanced at Aeris, and her eyes were fixed on it, like she was seeing something for the first time made real to her.
Yuffie rubbed her arms through her sweater. "Ugh, this place feels haunted."
"Hey, weren't the Ancients nomadic?" said Barret. "How come they had this big city here?"
Aeris gave her head a shake and glanced at him. "No one person ever stayed here for long," she said. "It was a gathering place, and a burial ground. A city of the dead."
"Definitely haunted," Yuffie decided.
Tifa could guess where they had to go now, but she stopped the party and glanced over their faces. They didn't know for certain how close Sephiroth might be, so they had to keep up this ruse a little while longer.
"I think it's worth looking around," she said. "Anyway, it's getting late, and there might be a good place to camp around here." She turned to Zack and Cloud. "You think you two could scout the way north? There's got to be another mountain pass at the far end of this valley."
By now she was sure they suspected something, but Zack nodded slowly without asking. "Yeah, sure," he said. "We'll check it out."
"Thanks. We'll meet back here later."
Tifa turned back to the others, starting to give them instruction as though they were going to split up to search the city, but once she was sure Zack and Cloud were out of earshot, she shook her head. "Scratch all that. Aeris, there's someplace in particular you need to go here, isn't there?"
Aeris nodded. "It's this way," she said, starting down the path towards the immense white coral.
They all followed after her, though Tifa threw a glance up the northern path as it branched off.
"Pretty soon we'll be able to stop lying to them," said Jessie.
"I'm looking forward to that," said Tifa. No more dreading that Sephiroth might be listening through them, because he already knew they were coming for him.
The coral grew dense on either side of them as they passed into the main structure, and had it still been a living thing, it could have overgrown the path centuries ago. The naked branches closed in overhead, blocking out much of the waning daylight, though enough filtered through to light their way. They walked single file, and ahead of her, Aeris's step never paused or faltered.
The coral fell away around them, opening up onto a small, still lake. The path circled it, leading to a building shaped like an enormous conch shell.
"It's just down here," said Aeris, glancing back at Tifa. Her step quickened along the shore, and she strode into the building, where she dropped her gear inside. A spiralling corridor led upwards, but Tifa was surprised to find it interrupted, and through a gap in its central railing, a crystalline staircase led down.
Beneath the city?
Aeris rushed down the first few steps, and Tifa hurried after her, catching her arm. It was an impossible stair, suspended over an immense darkness, with no railings on either side to catch them should they fall into... what, she didn't know. The whole city had an eerie feeling, and Tifa had understood Yuffie's unease, but this place frightened her. It didn't make sense.
"Let's take it easy," she said to Aeris. There was no turning back, but they could at least press forward with some caution.
Aeris smiled at her. "You're right," she said, and when Tifa released her, she descended the stairs more carefully. "It's just... I feel like I've been waiting to come here my whole life. This is... a sacred place. Hidden and folded inside of the city, the same magic as the Temple. You remember?"
Tifa nodded slowly, remembering how it had been infinitely larger within than it had appeared from without. She let her gaze fall to the glow beneath them, a cluster of buildings suspended in that darkness, sheltered from it by crystalline walls. Her fear began to subside in the face of the calm this place exuded. Not a trap, like the Temple, but a place of utter seclusion.
Coming down behind them, Barret gave a long, low whistle. "Damn, that's a sight."
"This place is beautiful, Aeris," Jessie added.
"Are you certain we're welcome here?" asked Vincent, and Tifa glanced back at hearing him voice her own feelings.
"You're with me," said Aeris. "It's a little confusing for everyone, and it makes them uneasy, but I've told them you're good people."
"Um," said Yuffie, "who's 'them'?"
"Think she means the dead folks," said Barret.
Aeris threw a gentle smile over her shoulder. "Don't worry. They won't do you any harm. But they are why we're here... Their voices are so clear here, I've never heard them like this before."
"Shouldn't they have returned to the Planet by now?" Nanaki wondered uncertainly, and Aeris laughed, a bright clear sound in the stillness.
"Oh, they're not the Cetra of thousands of years ago," she said. "They're... my mother, my grandparents, their families and their friends... The last traces of us, lingering behind for a moment like this."
She sounded delighted by it, and Tifa wondered if she'd been speaking to them since they'd arrived, connecting with family she'd never had the chance to know. Had they been watching over her, their voices too soft for her to hear until now?
The stairs lead into one of the buildings below, and they stepped out through a doorway onto a balcony. Towers rose on either side of them, and straight ahead a light fell from somewhere onto a sort of altar. Aeris took Tifa by the hand and led her towards it. They crossed a series of stone pillars laid out like stepping stones across the water below, and their passing sent faint ripples through the layer of mist that lay across the water.
The others paused uncertainly on the other side of the stones. The altar itself wasn't so large, and all of them together would crowd it.
"Should we come, too?" asked Yuffie.
Aeris looked back at them, and beckoned them across. "Come on. You're all here, and you all want this, too."
Aeris squeezed Tifa's hand, and they went up the steps to the altar together. There, Aeris at last knelt down in its center, and Tifa dropped with her. As the others joined them, forming an uncertain circle around them, Aeris motioned for them to sit, too.
"When I first told you about the White Materia," she said, "you all wanted to help me use it. I still don't know if you can... but I know that your will is the same as every Cetra here, and it can't hurt to try."
Her gaze met Tifa's as she finished speaking. It was the same thought she'd expressed that evening in Costa del Sol, maybe not said so clearly to the others, but she believed in them all the same. Each of them had their own reasons for being on this journey, but each of them was also here to save the Planet, and maybe that wish would lend some small bit of strength to her efforts, even coming from them.
"So what do we do?" asked Jessie.
"Just... pray with me?" said Aeris. "Pray for the life of the Planet, for Holy to wake and to protect it. If our wish should reach it, Holy will come."
Taking both of Tifa's hands in hers, Aeris closed her eyes.
Tifa glanced around at the others, nodded, and did the same.
This time, she couldn't let her doubts overrun her. Whether or not Holy or the Planet would ever hear them, Aeris was drawing on their strength. Having them here told her she wasn't alone in this. She wasn't a solitary voice trying to reach Holy, but the strongest of many.
And, it wasn't just those of them gathered around her here, Tifa thought. Maybe they didn't know about Holy, but Cloud and Zack were every bit as determined to protect the Planet from Sephiroth. And Wedge, back in that little farming village. Elmyra, and even Marlene, who knew the Planet needed saving even if she didn't quite know from what. Everyone in Cosmo Canyon who searched for answers, and worried. This was their wish, too.
And... the people they'd lost. Biggs. The people of Sector 7 and of Nibelheim who'd watched their worlds crumbling and held on anyway to what they could. Even if they were a part of the Planet now, that didn't mean everything they'd thought or felt was gone, did it?
...maybe that hope was the core of them. Something that had connected them to each other when they'd first formed AVALANCHE, and maybe something that connected them to the Planet, too.
Tifa still wasn't sure that she heard anything, but maybe the Planet had to hear her first, to trust her first. She thought of all the people she loved, and everything that they hoped for, and she prayed that there would be a future that could give it the chance to happen.
A distant sound from above filtered through her concentration, and Tifa opened her eyes to look up.
There was nothing to see but the crystalline stair, but the sounds continued. The clash of metal on metal, somewhere outside the shell house. The clash of swords.
Had Sephiroth found them after all? Had he realized what they had come here to do?
Tifa looked at Aeris. Her eyes remained closed, her expression placid, as though so deep in prayer that she hadn't noticed a thing.
The others had. Barret was starting to get to his feet, and he glanced at Tifa.
"I'm staying with Aeris," she said softly. "But that has to be Cloud and Zack fighting up there..."
"They'll need back-up," said Barret, finishing the thought. "Don't worry. We got this."
Jessie and Vincent got up to go with him, but Yuffie was still deep in concentration, and Nanaki looked to Aeris, settling back down. Whatever happened, they had to protect her.
Which meant that Tifa couldn't rejoin Aeris in her prayer; she had to stay alert. Her friends' footsteps echoed on the staircase above until they vanished from sight, and shortly gunfire joined the sounds of the battle.
A part of her desperately wanted to go after them. That was her battle, her vengeance; she'd started them on this path. What if one of them fell to Sephiroth, and she wasn't even there to see it? The same as her father...
But there was no way she could leave Aeris, vulnerable as she was. If he made it down here, he'd have to get through Tifa first, and she wouldn't make that easy for him this time.
Her anger and desperation roiled inside of her, and she hoped Aeris felt none of it. It was the antithesis of what she was sending out through the Planet, to Holy.
Suddenly Aeris opened her eyes, a smile spreading across her face. "We did it," she said eagerly. "Holy will come."
"You're sure?" said Tifa, but even as the question left her, a soft green glow began to surround Aeris--no, not to surround her. It was the White Materia in her hair, coming alive.
Aeris squeezed her hands and then climbed to her feet, tugging Tifa up with her. "Let's go help our friends," she said.
"You aren't tired?" asked Nanaki as he rose to his feet. Yuffie was slow to get up, and she looked above as though hearing the fighting for the first time.
Aeris shook her head. "No. I feel... strong. I feel like I could do anything."
Tifa nodded. "Then let's go," she agreed. "Let's stop him here."
Confusion flashed across Aeris's face, and then she said, "It isn't Sephiroth. It's the Shinra who followed us here."
Tifa nearly asked how she knew, when she'd been so out of it a moment ago, but she realized Aeris had to be more in tune with what was happening than any of them, informed by those who weren't part of the physical world.
Not Sephiroth, but the Shinra. Maybe they'd figured it out by now, where Sephiroth was headed, and decided they didn't need AVALANCHE anymore. But of all the places they might have chosen for a confrontation... Tifa's jaw set.
"Well, we still have to take care of them, don't we?" she said.
Aeris nodded, and the four of them rushed to join the others.