Chapter 12
Barret hadn't seen the Corel Mountains in four years. The vantage from the helicopter felt wrong, halfway between his memories and the topography traced out on maps and not enough like either. It was like the landscapes he walked in dreams that left him searching for a familiar bend and never quite finding the way home.
They made an attempt at introductions en route, but the noise of the rotors was loud, and Aeris was having trouble catching names, much less explanations. They shrugged and let it drop, making do with smiles and gestures Barret hoped she found halfway reassuring. He couldn't imagine how she felt, trusting herself to a bunch of strangers.
It was hours before they came in sight of the reactor. His memory had lost some of the details, transposed the shape of Midgar's reactors over it, but he hadn't forgotten the way that immense pit dropped into the circle of peaks, a hole bored into their heart. The slopes, once forested, now held nothing but sparse husks of trees.
Elena set the helicopter down on the overlook where Barret had stood with Dyne on their final visit here. Not for the first time, he wondered if Shinra had caused the accident themselves, if they'd lured two of the town's leaders here under the guise of an inspection to ensure they'd be too disorganized to resist.
In the past, he'd dismissed it as too crazy a notion. Shinra had taken advantage of the situation, but they hadn't created it. After Sector 7, he wasn't so sure.
Elena unstrapped herself from the pilot seat as the rotors spun down and hopped out of the helicopter. Barret tracked her with his eyes, wondering if she'd know the answer. How much had a rookie Turk had time to read up on? But he didn't ask.
"Fuel's about spent," she said as they all climbed out. "Wherever we go from here, it had better be close, or we're hoofing it."
"We're on foot from here," said Barret.
"Ugh..." said Yuffie, stumbling out into the late afternoon sun. "And why exactly are we here again?"
"Need a place to lay low for a minute while we catch our breath. I used to live around here, so..." He trailed off. "C'mon. This way."
They reiterated introductions as Barret led everyone down from the overlook. He stayed out of it, letting Tifa speak for him. At the bottom of the steps, he was greeted with the sight of the chasm where Dyne had fallen. His stump ached, the weight of his gun-arm dragging him down. He'd trade it in an instant for the weight of a man, but it didn't work that way.
"Barret?" came Wedge's voice softly beside him. "Which way?"
Barret swallowed down the lump in his throat and jerked his head to the right, not trusting his voice in the moment. The tone of the conversation behind them suggested no one else had noticed his hesitation. Maybe they just thought he was getting his bearings again after so many years.
As he led the way up onto the old train tracks, Barret found himself looking for any signs of that day. A bloodstain on the ties where the headman had gone down. Casings from the hail of bullets that had shredded his arm. But he couldn't see anything. If Shinra hadn't cleaned up their mess, then years of wind and dust had done it for them.
Behind him, Tifa and Jessie had started telling Aeris about AVALANCHE's activities in Midgar.
"I saw some of the posters," Aeris was saying. "'Don't be fooled by Shinra! Mako doesn't last forever!'"
"That's kinda how we started," Jessie said sheepishly. "Turns out it takes more than flyers to convince people."
"A lot of people know, is the thing," said Aeris. "I know they know. But they're scared."
"...and I don't blame them," said Tifa. "But we can't just stay scared."
"I'm not sure how I can help. I don't have what Shinra wants."
Barret tried to tell himself that even if Aeris didn't have any answers for them, it was still a good thing that they'd freed her. But it was so small, if that was all they'd done. He'd almost come full circle back to where he started, and his ideas of how to rid the world of Shinra had only gotten murkier.
Wedge was still walking just a step behind him. "We don't have to worry about trains coming through here, do we?" he asked quietly.
"Nah," said Barret. "Used to use these tracks for transportin' coal. Built 'em out when the reactor was goin' up to help cart up materials, but they ain't been used since it was finished."
Wedge nodded, and after a pause, he said, "It's pretty here."
Barret blinked and looked up. The sun was dipping into the west, the sky just beginning to catch fire. The mountain ridges rose on either side of them, not as green as they used to be but still solid in their majesty. Below them ran the river with its slow and gentle current.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Guess so."
Nearly an hour's walk brought them to the old drawbridge, and Barret swallowed a curse at finding it up. "Looks like we gotta head the long way around," he said.
"We can't get to the controls to lower it from here?" Tifa asked.
Barret shook his head and pointed to the little shack on the far side. "Control booth's over there. Can't reach it from here."
"It doesn't look so far across," said Yuffie.
"What, you think you can jump that?" said Barret. "No way."
Yuffie rolled her eyes and unslung her pack from her shoulders. "Not jump it, stupid. But I can get across."
Barret exchanged skeptical looks with Wedge, but then out of her pack she produced a grappling hook.
"Oh!" said Aeris. "I guess that might work."
"'course it'll work," Yuffie said confidently. She started up the incline of the raised bridge, and in curiosity the rest of them began to trail after, but Barret motioned for them to stay put. If she could get across, they didn't want to be on the bridge when she lowered it. But he went up with her himself.
"Booth shouldn't be locked or anything," he said. "Gonna be two levers in there, one for switchin' tracks an' one for the bridge. Oughtta be pretty straightforward, but if it turns out it don't work no more, you come right back. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Maybe Tifa oughtta go..."
"You think I carry this around 'cause I've never used it before? Don't be a baby."
As Yuffie hefted the grappling hook in her hand, Barret leaned forward to peer down at the river. It was a longer drop than he liked from here, but Yuffie had proven herself a good swimmer. If she fell, she could probably make it somewhere where they could help her climb back up.
She slung the hook across, and it struck with the thunk of metal against wood. She gave the connecting rope a few experimental tugs, and it held, caught on one of the ties on the other side.
Turning to Barret, she gave him a mock salute. "See ya!" she said, and then hopped off the ledge before he could say anything.
His heart dropped into his stomach as she swung down, but the rope held. As its pendulum motion began to slow, she was already climbing up. She reached the top, retrieved the hook, and stuck her tongue out at him before she was off down the tracks towards the control booth.
Barret made his way back down to join the others. "Guess we're in business."
"You're all very talented," Aeris remarked.
"Not sure what else you'd expect from a ninja," said Elena, and they all looked at her. "I mean... That's what she is. A ninja. From Wutai."
"Turks got files on Wutain teenagers?" Barret asked, arching an eyebrow.
Elena shrugged, shaking her head. "Maybe a few. But you can just tell, from her gear and the accent and everything."
"It does make sense," Tifa added.
It did, but Barret rubbed his beard. "But doesn't that mean... she's workin' for Wutai on some kinda mission?"
"Hard to say," said Elena. "By all appearances, Godo's in compliance with the treaty. So either he's trying something underhanded or she's a rogue agent."
"Kind of like you, I guess," said Aeris.
Elena's expression fell, like the enormity of what she'd done was only just starting to hit her. She crossed her arms, and then uncrossed them when Aeris silently offered her back her suit jacket. Small comfort, maybe, given they'd tossed the PHS that had been in the inside pocket out somewhere over the plains.
A loud click sounded, and then the steady clanking of the bridge lowering. Barret turned to watch as it settled into place, and then motioned the others to follow. "C'mon. Not too much farther."
They rejoined Yuffie, who grinned at them in satisfaction, and Barret pulled the lever to bring the bridge back up, covering their tracks.
The sun was setting in earnest as Barret guided them through the entrance to an old mine shaft. Tifa got her flashlight out, but they found an old electric lantern that gave better light once they swapped out the batteries. They made a sweep for monsters and then settled deep enough in that the light wouldn't be seen from outside.
They sat in a circle around the lantern and passed around rations. Most of them had been able to sneak in meals at the ship's mess, so with what they'd picked up in Junon, they were still set for a few days. Barret just didn't know what those days would look like. It was hard to look forward when being here made him remember different faces. The coal dust forever under his fingernails and the camaraderie at the end of the shift. Not many of them had looked further ahead than the end of the week, and when they'd tried, it'd cost them everything.
"So," Jessie began when Barret failed to, "what we know is this: Shinra's following Sephiroth because they think he'll lead them to the Promised Land. They probably think it's full of Mako. Right?"
Elena nodded in confirmation.
"Aeris," said Tifa. "Do you know anything about it? If you want to tell us."
Aeris sat with her legs tucked beneath her, hands around a borrowed cup. "I... I'm not sure," she admitted. "I always understood... it was something you have to search for. You can't just know where the Promised Land is. No one can tell you."
"That sounds more like a metaphor," Wedge observed.
"It might be. I really don't know."
"It might also be magic," Red proposed.
While Aeris only looked at him with interest, Elena started back. "What the hell!?"
"Oh," said Jessie. "Yeah, he talks. Don't make a big deal out of it."
Elena shook her head incredulously. "I thought it was weird you guys were so set on bringing your damn dog everywhere..." she muttered.
Red cleared his throat.
"Right," said Jessie. "Magic?"
"If the Promised Land is a real place," he said, "there could be a barrier to entry. Perhaps only those who have earned it would be able to enter, or even see the entrance."
"Either way, it's starting to sound like even if Sephiroth did find the Promised Land, Shinra might not be able to follow him," Jessie said.
"...but what would Sephiroth do with it?" Tifa asked.
Yuffie shrugged. "Are you supposed to do something with the Promised Land or just enjoy it?"
Tifa shook her head. "I just... With everything else he's done, it doesn't make sense to me that all he's after is... a nice place to live. I guess."
Everyone glanced at Aeris again, but she only shook her head.
"Why's Shinra so sure that's what he's after in the first place?" Barret spoke up at last.
"...because he said it," said Elena. When they looked to her, she went on, "Before he killed the President, he said he wouldn't allow Shinra to have the Promised Land."
"He just announced that for the cameras or what?"
"Palmer heard it, but it got picked up on the security tapes, yeah."
"But..." Jessie frowned thoughtfully. "That's the other weird thing. If Sephiroth is an Ancient, did Shinra not know before? Couldn't they have tried to get him to lead them to the Promised Land back when he was still in SOLDIER?"
"He didn't know," said Elena.
Aeris stared at her. "What?"
Elena folded her arms in discomfort and took a deep breath. "Look, this is, um... Really classified. You understand?"
"You afraid we're gonna spread it around to... who, exactly?" Barret asked her, raising an eyebrow. Sharing company secrets with AVALANCHE was already about as bad as it got.
"It's not that," said Aeris before Elena could do more than glower at him. "You want us to understand what a big deal it is. Right?"
Elena eyed her warily and then nodded. "I've only seen the summary reports. But... Sephiroth was engineered to be what he is."
"Engineered...?" Tifa echoed. Barret couldn't help a glance at Red; he hadn't thought Shinra could breed a talking dog, much less create an Ancient.
"They called it the Jenova Project," Elena went on. "Hojo's predecessor found the cadaver of an Ancient, and he submitted a proposal for using that to genetically engineer one."
"Why would they need to do that, when...?" Wedge trailed off, gesturing helplessly to Aeris.
"This was a good ten years before they found Aeris's mother. I think."
Aeris dropped her gaze to her lap, and no one spoke up to ask her any more about that. Red padded over to settle beside her, bumping her arm gently with his head.
Barret looked back to Elena. "So they made Sephiroth. An' they never told 'im what he was?"
Elena shrugged. "I guess they were hoping he'd just naturally start doing Ancient stuff. And he was a really good soldier, but as far as I know, he didn't find out about any of it until he went to Nibelheim."
Jessie glanced at Tifa, who'd gone motionless at the word. "Nibelheim... huh? Does Shinra do research there? It's the site of their first Mako reactor, right?"
"That's right," Elena confirmed. "It's where the Jenova Project took place, and a bunch of the files were still locked up in the mansion. It's where the Jenova specimen used to be stored, too."
She said it so easily, meanwhile Tifa's knuckles were white where she clenched her hands in her lap.
"Tifa?" Barret said. "You okay?"
"So Shinra did this..." she said, a tremor in her voice somewhere between fury and tears. "They made him what he is, and then they just... set him loose to find out like that? What did they think was going to happen?"
Elena's expression sobered, and she shook her head. "...I don't know."
"Um," said Aeris, "am I missing something? Where's Nibelheim?"
"Isn't that that town that burned down?" Yuffie asked.
Tifa drew in on herself again, swallowing hard. Jessie looked at her long enough to catch her eye, and then turned to the rest of them. "It is," she said. "And Sephiroth's the one who did it. He found out what was done there, and he burned the place to the ground. ...and Tifa saw it happen."
"Shit," Barret said.
"Tifa..." said Wedge, but she shook her head, waving them off. She didn't want them to fuss over her now, she wanted to try to hold it together.
So Barret returned his attention to Elena. "So that's why Shinra announced he died? To cover up him goin' berserk?"
Elena shook her head. "We really thought he died," she said. "I mean... Nibelheim got covered up, but all the evidence pointed to Sephiroth never making it out of the reactor. The other men with him on that mission were found beat to hell but alive. The theory was they managed to take him out."
"What was he doing at the reactor?" Jessie wondered.
"Jenova," Tifa said suddenly, voice hoarse. "That's... That's why the name sounded familiar. There was a door marked Jenova."
Elena nodded. "That's where they used to store it. But after Nibelheim, they had it shipped to Midgar."
"And that's what Sephiroth retrieved from the Shinra building," Red concluded.
"I don't get it," said Barret. "Isn't Jenova just a corpse?"
"Maybe he doesn't want Shinra to be able to make any more like him," Jessie proposed. "I mean, we're talking human experimentation. That's pretty messed up."
"But if it's about that..." Tifa said. "If it's revenge...... The people of Nibelheim didn't do anything to him."
"Man gets angry enough... might have a hard time differentiating." She looked at him with something like betrayal, and he held up his hand. "I ain't tryin' to excuse him. There's no excuse for that. Just sayin' it might be where his head's at. Maybe he's ragin' against the whole world."
Yuffie leaned back on her hands. "So what happened to the guys you thought took him out? If he is out for revenge, they'd probably be high on his list, right? Maybe he's looking for 'em."
Elena shook her head again. "The only thing I read is they were taken into custody afterwards. They might not've survived."
"Could we find out?" Jessie asked.
"Well... Maybe. But these aren't files every Shinra facility is just gonna have. Everything to do with Nibelheim is seriously under wraps, so it might only be accessible at Headquarters."
"...what about talking to Sephiroth?" Aeris asked quietly.
Everyone looked at her.
"That is... I know what he's done. But he and I..." She trailed off.
"Aeris," said Red, his tone gentler than Barret had heard it before. "Have you never met another Cetra before?"
She shook her head. "Just my mother. And she died a long time ago."
Barret let that hang like a moment of silence as they all likely worked out that Shinra would have had something to do with it.
Then he said, "We try to talk to 'im, he might just try an' kill us."
"Maybe," said Red. "Maybe not. But perhaps we all ought to rest and let this information sink in before we decide whether that's a risk we want to take."
Barret squinted at him, but it was a sensible suggestion. It had been another long, weird day. "Yeah, all right," he said. "Makes sense."
His eyes found Tifa first, but she'd already gotten to her feet and turned her back on the circle of lantern light. Jessie was faster than him, going after her into the dark of the tunnel. Barret hoped Tifa understood, if they decided to try talking to Sephiroth, no one would force her to be a part of that, and he didn't have any expectations of encountering an ally. Sephiroth was just an angle of this that they needed to understand.
As the others moved about the tunnel, packing away cups and unstrapping bedrolls, Aeris, with no gear of her own, sat still by the light. Red lay beside her, tail swaying slowly. Barret got up to sit on her other side.
"You know whatever plans we're makin', you don't gotta come along for 'em just 'cause we picked you up."
She gave him an amused smile. "You've all been really consistent about reassuring me I haven't been kidnapped."
Barret scratched his head. "Well... Don't want you to feel that way."
"I appreciate it," she said. "It's kind of a lot though, huh?"
"Yeah. Makes your head hurt."
"Mm." She was quiet for a moment, looking ahead at nothing in particular. "It'd be pretty stupid to try going home, is the thing. They'd just find me again."
"You wanna stick with us, we'll look out for ya," he promised.
Aeris looked up at him. "Even if I want to have a chat with Sephiroth?"
"Maybe you ain't heard all the crazy shit we get up to."
That got a soft giggle out of her, and she ducked her head in acknowledgment.
"You think it over," he said. "Just... wanted to make sure you know you got options."
"...thanks," she said.
Barret nodded. He wouldn't pretend to know what she was thinking about all of this, about all of them. She seemed to fit in so effortlessly, but some people honed that kind of skill as a defense mechanism. Maybe she was terrified. Maybe she didn't know what she thought, yet. He could only hope that if she stuck with them, she'd feel like it was her own choice.
And then there was their other new recruit.
Elena had dragged her pack to a shadowy corner far from where any of the others were setting up. She didn't look at him as he approached.
"...you okay?"
"What, you're not gonna tie me up for the night? Make sure I don't run off and rat you out?"
"Think we both know there's no goin' back for you now."
She didn't say anything to that. Her hands were still around the bedroll she'd just shaken out.
"Big decision you made today," he went on. "Don't know exactly what changed your mind, but we couldn't've done it without ya."
Elena turned to squint at him suspiciously, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. A criticism of her performance, a warning that they'd still be keeping a close eye on her. Instead, Barret just laid his hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but didn't push him away.
"You did good," he said.
When she didn't respond, he let her be. She had her own shit to work through, the reality of turning her back on something she'd believed in so hard she'd let them craft her into a Turk. She hadn't been one long enough to get blood on her hands, but she must have thought herself prepared to, and none of them were sure exactly what had tipped the scales for her. What had Rufus said to cost him her loyalty?
How did AVALANCHE earn it? They had to be more than just the only people who'd take her.
But trust took time. He wouldn't be solving any of that tonight.
"Who's taking first watch?" Wedge asked him as he returned to gather his own gear.
"I'll do it," Barret said.
"...think you'll have a hard time sleeping?" Wedge ventured.
Barret met his gaze. They all knew Tifa's deal now, but Barret hadn't told the others anything about Corel. People left home for Midgar for a lot of reasons, so he doubted anyone but Tifa suspected there was anything to tell, and she was struggling with her own damage.
Should he have said something? When was the right time for that? They didn't even know where they'd be heading tomorrow. If their path took them through North Corel, it'd come up whether he wanted it to or not.
"Probably," he said at last.
"You're keeping it together really well," Wedge said. "But if you need to talk to anyone, or anything... I'm here, okay?"
"Yeah." It hadn't escaped his notice the way Wedge had positioned himself close by the whole time, ready to catch him if he fell. He wasn't sure what he could say in response. "Don't think I got any words right now," he admitted. "Just... gotta sit with it."
"Okay," Wedge said, accepting that without judgment or disappointment.
"...'preciate you lookin' out for me," Barret managed, and Wedge smiled.
"Always," he said.
Barret laid out his bedroll not far from where Wedge had placed his. As the others settled down to try and get some sleep, he dimmed the lantern and sat down to keep watch. Monsters hadn't been much of a concern when these mines had been active, but after years of disuse and the reactor nearby putting its pollutants out into the world, he didn't know.
None of it felt like coming home, he realized. He could probably still navigate this mine like nothing had changed, but it had, and so had he. He'd stopped being a Corel man when he'd left it behind to take the fight to Shinra. He could have stayed. He could have thrown himself into winning back everyone's trust, rebuilding, raising Marlene among her people. But he'd been a coward, and taken the path that would let him start over, putting on the act of being a good man.
They'd probably head on through North Corel. Whatever their next move, it didn't make sense to retrace their steps back to Costa del Sol. So he'd tell the others on the way, about what he'd done, and who he was. And he'd see if they still wanted to follow.