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"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
if i look back, i am lost
Origami Around
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almost home
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Love Begins
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@daydreambouquet
i will burn down this kingdom, and from its ashes build for you a new one–a kingdom worthy of you. i will show you a world where your light will outshine the sun. a world that will know no darkness – and you will have no more need of tears. i will not fail you in this.
general relativity for babies
― Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909 [text ID: I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.]
Commenting fanfiction is the easiest thing in the world once you start doing it.
I leave a comment on every single fic I read. Sometimes when I read published books I go and leave a comment somewhere the author can find it. Granted, I literally majored in ‘leaving comments on fics’ (English Education), but once you start doing it it just becomes second nature. Now you’re gonna go to the Ozymandias school of leaving comments:
Problem: I can’t leave kudos again.
Beginner: This is a second/third/fourth Kudos
Advanced: This is my second/third/fortieth time reading this, I still love it so much. Here are a few new things I noticed. I like the way you personally do x, y, z compared to other authors I’ve read (in this ship/genre/fandom).
Problem: I don’t know what to say :(
Beginner: Just list what you did to read this fic. “I stayed up late reading this”, “I read this on a crowded train”, “this kept me company while sick”.
Advanced: X,Y,Z parts made me get butterflies, and I had a physical reaction to this part of the story, I squealed outloud when characters did x,y,z. I blushed at this part. I laughed out loud here. Whatever.
Problem: I’m embarrassed to leave a comment (what if I annoy the author?)
Beginner: Short answer: you won’t EVER annoy the author (unless you’re needlessly mean) But to start, be generic, you don’t have to spill your soul in the comments section. “I liked this” “I enjoyed reading this” “nice fic”.
Advanced: This really meant a lot to me that you wrote this. This is something I feel like I’ve always wanted to read. This fic hit me in all the right places. Etc.
Problem: I don’t know how to express myself/my experience
Beginner: My beginners go to is to highlight a line, put that in your comment and say “i liked this” or to identify basic emotions you had while reading and comment those “this made me happy” “this part made me sad” “i almost cried” “you made me laugh” Advanced: “Highlighted line” This line made me smile because it has to do with character development/it’s really romantic/it’s so unique/it’s moving. Sometimes I don’t highlight a line at all, I just talk about the stuff I’ve noticed were unique to the fic. “I love the way you did this particular thing with this character”.
"If everything's a dream, don't wake me."
@crimson-sun's miniprints are here and they're just as adorable as these four fluffy chocobos! ☁️
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
The end is the beginning is the end.
Preview of Chapter 40 - Flowers Blooming in the Church
Dappled light weaves through the broken beams of an abandoned church in the Sector Six slums. A lush circle of flowers spreads in the sunken floorboards near the old chancel below, and Aerith basks in that warmth, closing her eyes to take in the serenity of this sanctuary. She’d discovered this place years ago, tucked between piles of military trash, discarded mechanical monsters from the Wutai war and scraps from the decommissioned Shinra space program. Any semblance of former deities or worship is long worn away by time or vandals, but the collapsed roof and a curious design flaw in the Midgar plate above allows pure sunlight to come through for a scant few afternoon hours.
The distant din of the city, the cavernous ceilings, the way the dreary interior transforms when sunlight peaks through all craft the illusion of another world, another time. A place just for her. The flowers radiate gold and lustrous ivory across a blanket of green, a tiny outcrop of life in this otherwise house of decay. She’d cultivated the blossoms when she first found them, transplanted a bunch to the patches near Elmyra’s house, and cared for them with love and reverence because this is the only place she’d seen flowers blooming in the slums.
It encourages her, somehow. Every day is difficult, but these blossoms mean strength, resilience.
She sighs and opens her eyes. One palm presses to soil as she sits up, inhaling the mix of floral perfume, musty wood decomposition, and faint Mako on the breeze. Sometimes, the slums can be beautiful.
She massages the area above her heart. A knot bothers her there. She can’t remember what she’d been doing before this or when she got here. Her head swims with nothingness. But the fading sunlight means late afternoon. She should be on her way to the upper Plate with baskets of flowers to sell for the evening rush. She looks around for her large basket. Must’ve left it at home.
The flowerbed here has grown tenfold since Aerith first discovered it. Her friends think that the flowers bloom because of Aerith, but she knows there’s something special about this place. She can hear certain things, echoes. The Lifestream must be close.
A dove flutters in the rafters. A single white feather drifts and Aerith regards it. The image disturbs a vague recollection from her dreams, but she can’t settle on it.
The door creaks, uneven on its hinges, pushed aside by a gloved hand, a familiar uniform.
Will you all come with me?
full gif set
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Let’s mosey.
Preview of Chapter 39 - Jenova Complete
Cloud daydreams at the kitchen table, strumming his fingers to a tune in his head. His mother is preparing dinner, and the bright sun shines through curtained windows, basking her in silhouette. This is his first time home since joining the academy, and the fresh mountain air swirls with memories. He hasn't heard this tune in years, yet it returns as if she were playing it now. The girl next door...
"Cloud, are you listening?"
His mother faces him, one hand holding a butcher's knife. He cannot see her well in the glaring light.
"Always somewhere far, aren't we?" she asks. It is a rhetorical question.
He can't recall what she could have been saying.
"I was saying I'm worried about you. I'm glad you decided to stay here at home instead of with the General and his entourage at the Shinra Mansion."
She returns to the cutting board, slicing vegetables. The rhythmic tap of the knife sounds loud, peculiar.
A flicker of rose catches his eye. In the corner of the room, a girl stands in a pink dress, hands clasped. He should recognize her. The room flickers and spins. Nausea grips him. He goes to stand, and his consciousness shifts out. Up.
He steps away from his body, outside of himself. Intense sickness underpins a strange clarity. This is a memory, but none his own. The dead MP lived here, ate here, harbored secret feelings for the girl next door. And this uniform is a dark blue he never wore.
The woman in pink is gone. The MP still sitting at the table leans against one palm, tracing a finger on the wood grain, oblivious to the doppelganger behind him.
"You know, I am not sure I like you hanging around the General," his mother says without turning. "Seems dangerous, a mission that he would be on."
The MP mentions that being with the General is the safest type of mission because of his military prowess. He is unmatched, and this particular task is non-combative. No need for concern.
"Still," the MP's mother says with a huff. "What if he gives you a dangerous order? Would you have to obey?"
That's how the military works, the MP answers. Danger is inherent, but the General would never issue a command that did not have a strategic objective.
"And that other SOLDIER… Well, I think it's fine for such prestigious gentlemen to visit Nibelheim, but sending someone First-Class…."
Don't worry, mother, the MP replies. Nothing bad will happen. He fidgets. He's thinking of Tifa.
The bodiless Cloud tries to leave, but the doors are not real. This construct is a cage.
"You shouldn't take any more missions with him." The mother chops fiercely at a slab of meat, and the knife is now a cleaver.
There isn't a choice, the MP says. Shinra makes the decisions.
Annoyance edges her actions. Her shoulders are tense.
"Shinra is the problem." She cracks bone from a tiny carcass on the cutting board.
The pot behind her boils, and water steams onto the stovetop. The MP stays at the table, continuing to tap, though the melody is gone. He taps a new, steady beat. A clicking.
The chopping stops. The woman's gaze moves from the MP to Cloud.
A long white hallway beats in pulses. Sterile clean tiles lead to a series of numbered doors. He was never supposed to be down here. He'd made a wrong turn and gotten lost.
"Lost," his mother says. "Ah, but you were never lost. You always knew exactly what to do. You know what we want."
A smile. He can hear her smiling. A burning smell creeps through the house. The light outside glows and undulates.
Androids from SHinRa, part 3 🌟
With our favourite bartender 😌 outfit design is from yorha stage play !
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Preview of Chapter 38 - The Planet’s Crisis
The Lifestream eats at Aerith’s corpse, discarding fabric and hair while melting organic tissue into the blood of the Planet. The particles are dutiful, engaging in this ancient ritual of ingestion and recomposition. The Planet recognizes her Cetra cells and welcomes its sister into its Promised Land. Mako swells around her, seeps into her body through the chest wound. Crimson streamlets trail like ribbons in the murky green. The Lifestream encounters another entity, too, nestled and attached to Aerith’s cells. Ah, the Planet knows this one. Alien matter from the stars, smashed to earth countless times over the eons. Buried, banished. The Lifestream knows not what to do with this material, and so it disregards.
But Jenova does not require blood or flesh in the same way Aerith does. Mother remains awake through this ordeal as the Planet attempts to ravage her symbiote’s body. Jenova is a sentient creature though its logic dwells outside of human understanding, and the Planet is a collective of countless souls and spirits, energies magnanimous and divine. Neither can communicate directly, though each is aware of the other.
The Planet is in crisis. The Lifestream no longer flourishes, and a malady manipulates remnants of Jenova’s whole. Sephiroth, the son that Shinra cut out of her, injects his will into the Lifestream, and his command distorts Mother’s intentions.
If Aerith were any other scrap—a dead SOLDIER, dripping with Hojo’s failures—the Lifestream would encapsulate the Jenova cells into a sort of stasis while it otherwise recycles growth from decay. But Aerith’s Cetra lineage combines with Mother at the cellular level, and a powerful symbiosis manifests. Her body bridges the gap between the celestial and earthly, and Mother will not release her. Instead, the Jenova cells lingering from dead SOLDIERs in the Lifestream attract onto Aerith. A puddle of sludge wraps to her dwindling flesh. The Lifestream attempts to devour the rest of its Cetra target, but the Jenova cells are too plentiful, and eventually the Planet rejects the entire form, writing it off as incorrigible.
Aerith is not alive, but Jenova connects to the Planet’s pain. Those Cetra fragments allow this rarity, this echo of past arrangements. For an instant, Jenova and the Planet are one, and a terrible future opens up. Sephiroth brings annihilation. And the desire to survive, a reflection of Aerith’s final thoughts, branches through the Lifestream.
The Planet expels the collection of Jenova cells, like an animal spewing poison, and a spurt of Mako carries the dark mass upwards, outwards into an underground tunnel near the core.
A flutter of energy crisps at Jenova’s beck before the Planet severs their connection. Mother is alone, yet the stretching agony of her other body, twisted beyond recognition, drives fresh resilience. She does not require a host, but moving without one is difficult on this planet. Her bond with the Cetra imparted many gifts. As Aerith learned from Jenova, so, too, did Jenova learn through the wisdom of Aerith’s bloodlines.
A train’s whistle blows. The station platform of the Sector Seven slums is desolate this rainy night. Grime drips off the massive plate above, and Mako-powered street lamps swing intermittent cones of yellow in the wind. Black umbrellas, sleek and shiny, pop open as passengers disembark the train.
Aerith kneels in the gutter beside her mother, a child barely seven. Ifalna hasn’t moved since they stumbled together off the last train and collapsed beneath these platform steps. Garbage accumulates around them, whipped up by the storm, wet and sticking to Aerith’s shins. She squeezes her mother’s hand, sobbing. Hair clings to her forehead and cheeks. Ifalna is cold. Shinra did something to her which left no mark, so she could very well be sleeping. A drunk. Nobody stops and looks because this is a night when everyone hurries home. The weather obscures all awareness.
The whistle blows again, this time as the train leaves the station. It fades, pitch resonating. This is the sound Aerith never forgets. The fading of everything as the world walks away. Tomorrow Elymra will find her, tucked against her mother’s bony clavicle, wrapped beneath a limp arm, but tonight is eternal. Tonight is where Aerith first dies.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
VENI, VENI, VENIAS
Preview of Chapter 37 - One-Winged Angel
She’s dreaming of smoke and fire. No, it isn't Nibelheim. She rarely dreams of home, and when she does, it’s in nightmare snapshots of her father bleeding out atop metal grating. Here she’s following someone through visceral soot that coats her mouth and stings her eyes, but she cannot get a good glimpse of them. They are always ahead in the smog.
Tifa startles awake to a silent cavern of luminescent materia crystals. The constant undulations craft an illusion of underwater solitude, but she is not alone. Her companions are asleep in adjacent grottos. After hours of traveling through progressively hotter tunnels hollowed by Mako depletion, the group decided to rest. Pushing forward to find Cloud and Aerith would do no favors if they reencountered Jenova. Or worse.
Jenova manipulated friend into foe, poisoning slow and steady with insidious results; what horrors could it evolve into next? Tifa hangs her head between crossed arms over her knees. She’s sweating. Most of the group shed their winter clothes like a trail of breadcrumbs. But these tunnels are a labyrinth, and no matter which tactic the group employs for finding their way out, the Planet seems intent on swallowing them whole. Corridors change. Crystalline structures shift. Rocks crumble, and chasms diverge. The Lifestream only knows to consume and recreate. And this heat… Tifa wipes her forehead. It is cooking them alive.
She stands and stretches, not at all rested. The fire in her dreams pushes into the waking world and distorts her senses. Burnt char pervades the heady sweetness of Mako, dissipating in the wake of its phantom host. The budding materia lends an ethereal glow to the atmosphere, and nebulous shadows follow Tifa as she checks on the others.
Barret mumbles in his sleep next to Nanaki, who has his tail tucked to his nose. Yuffie sprawls in the consecutive chamber with Vincent leaning against the wall, upright, eyes open. Cid curls near his lance in the next alcove. Everyone has found their own sliver of space, and Vincent is on watch.
“Tifa,” he regards. “Everything alright?”
Crimson eyes flutter to hers beneath dark locks.
“Just nightmares,” she says.
Vincent nods as if this is certainly the place for nightmares. She wonders how anyone can sleep with the anxiety of what’s ahead and what’s behind.
“I-I’m going for a brief walk,” she says. “To clear my head. I won’t go far.”
Vincent assesses in silence whether or not he should insist upon chaperoning. The dangers surrounding them are unknown, but he relaxes and gestures his understanding. She wants to be alone.
She tightens her gloves, though the motions provide no comfort. She steps into the main artery of vast rock and ice lit faintly by the omnipresent Lifestream, and her heart skips. Adrenaline flushes the fuzziness and brimstone away.
“Cloud?”
He’s standing at the entrance to another cave that glitters in patches of blue materia. The twinkling is almost starlight.
“Tifa!” He runs to her and embraces.
The pair hug tight. She catches the insane rush of relief before it spills into tears down her cheeks. Her skin presses to his.
“You’re okay!” she says, grasping both his hands. “What happened?”
He’s not okay, but physical damage can heal. Scrapes cover his arms. He winces in her embrace. He’s limping, and there’s—
“Blood?” she asks. Splattered droplets dot the remnants of his armor. He, too, has lost his heavy outer clothing. “What happened? Tell me.”
“I’m alright,” he says, squeezing her gloves. “I fell a long way, but everything is fine.”
She surveys, awaiting explanation.
Then he begins, “I found Aerith.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Preview of Chapter 36 - Those Chosen by the Planet
He awakens with a splitting headache into a dismal fog. At first, he thinks this must be a dream because his body feels separate and distant. Surreal. Then he tastes blood in his mouth. His lip is cut. There are scrapes on his forearms and bruising along his ribs. He coughs with a pained effort and gets to his feet.
“Hello?”
The white fog shifts and plays tricks with his eyes. He sees shadows receding, like a crowd all around him.
“Aerith?”
He hears her, faint but true. A voice in a choir, mystical and fleeting. Then she’s carried away.
“Wait!” He stumbles through the fog, arms outstretched, senses alert, but there is nothing around. Nothing between his fingers. Not even condensation. The mist is vast and curling as if in the wake of many hurried movements. A blanched backlight from the Lifestream lends the illusion of opacity, and he limps on, directionless, determined to find her. She is near. He can feel it.
A wall of black ice appears through the fog. Massive slats of splintered rock reach endless above and to either side, the result of an impact eons ago. The surface shimmers with a thousand tiny motes, and the translucent depths seem unreal. The material… He places one hand on the mirrored surface, watching his reflection do the same. This material is the same as the ancient temple. Voices, unintelligible, rush through his head, imparting such understanding. He focuses on them, trying to pick apart any language or useful clue without luck.
The fragments of his reflection move. A smile, none his own, flashes through the mirror, and a firework of pain crackles up his spine, along his neck and face. He falls on his palms, and the companion looks down at him. The whorls in the rock twist and captivate, locking him into an unwilling trance. The image lifts its gaze to the stars. The voices swell.
Then adrenaline hits. Someone is very near. He leaps up.
Aerith is behind him, perfectly still in the clearing mists, with hands clasped, chin angled down.
“Aerith…” he breathes out, but something is wrong. She smiles with only her lips. Dead eyes rise to him from an emaciated frame. Her hair hangs in clumps, and her dress is torn and ice-crusted.
“You…you must be freezing,” he says. A second heartbeat emerges in the noise, pumping into his own.
“Oh, I’m quite fine, brother,” she replies without faltering.
“Where’s Zack?” he asks. The last time he saw her, that doppelganger wasn’t far behind.
She trickles a laugh that mutates to a cough, and she leans over, clutching her stomach until ooze trails at her lips. She wipes it then stares back at Cloud.
“Zack is dead,” she says, and the smile is gone.
“Oh.” Then the manipulations must be gone, too.
The compulsion to hug her is overwhelming. He pulls her into an embrace, of which she gives no response. Her skin is hot, muscles limp, and as he presses his chin against her temple, a tremor like insects hums within her body. It harmonizes and reverberates to the barrage of voices.
“We have to go,” he says, savoring the relief their physical contact brings. “Now.”
He holds her hands, but she doesn’t react.
“Sephiroth was right,” she says. “This is the Promised Land. We cannot go. I’ve learned so much here.”
Her eyes sweep the perimeter, at the Lifestream encased below and at the glittering celestial rock.
“This place sustains me. It is the core of the Planet, and I know what we have to do.”
“No, we have to leave.”
He tries to pull, but she resists.
“Sephiroth is a madman,” he says. “I saw what he wants when I gave him the Black Materia.”
“A cleansing.”
“Annihilation. Nibelheim was only the beginning.”
“He’s a true herald of the coming union.”
“...Union?”
Aerith smiles that peculiar way again.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches.
From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Definitely no snowboarding.
Preview of Chapter 35 - The North Crater
The barrier is gone, and the north crater lies exposed in the crisp, glacial landscape. The Weapon’s emergence that fateful day of the Black Materia left mountains of ice dislodged, blocking any straightforward descent.
“Gonna have to climb down,” Cid says as he chews his cigarette. Wind sways the airship, and his knuckles are white pressed on the controls.
Nobody speaks while he navigates. The meteor darkens the sky with a hot red ring of unnatural clouds. It won’t be long now until impact. Tifa rubs one palm and cannot keep the jitters down. She’s never felt the end of the world this close, this palpable, and it’s disheveling her insides. She glances at Cloud, so focused and intent, eyes locked on the closing gap of ice below.
“Damn this feels crazy,” Barret opines. “We sure Aerith down there?”
Cloud responds without moving. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“You gonna have to be a bit more specific on how you know this. ‘Cuz looks to me we about to plunge into some deep shit.”
Cloud's eyes go to Tifa, then Barret.
“She contacted me once through that…dream,” Cloud says. “This is the same sort of thing.”
The Highwind is climate-controlled, yet a chill branches at the base of Tifa’s skull. This is where the reunion was supposed to happen, and now Cloud feels beckoned back here. She sees him standing in the Nibel Reactor, ooze dripping from his face, smiling with the tentacled body of Jenova suspended in clear blue liquid behind him. Writhing, in grotesque detail.
“Hey,” Cloud says, touching her forearm. “You ready for this?”
He’s only speaking to her, and the dizziness clears as she holds his stoic expression. He wouldn’t endanger them all, bringing them here. And he’s tried to convince everyone to walk away multiple times.
Yuffie pushes in.
“Ready as ever to get off this ship,” she says, ever the one to lighten the mood.
The Highwind levels off, and the engines settle into a purr. Cid exhales.
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll climb the rest of the way down.”
The group is silent as they head to the cargo bay. Cid and Barret haul open the doors into a gloom of blue stillness with rocks and jagged sheets of ice.
Cloud slides down the rope ladder first. He rolls one shoulder upon landing and tests his weight across the platform. He reports it safe and begins scouting the best route. Tifa waits until Nanaki is down before following because his fiery tail lends a comforting sphere of light. The rest of the cavern glows with the subtle flow of pale green. The Lifestream is beneath them, and its presence is stronger now than on their first trip.
The Highwind ascends to a safe hovering altitude after everyone disembarks, and as it does, the meteor clips into view, massive and ominous. It’s close enough that keen markings on its surface are visible. Tifa squints at it. Can Cloud see them, too? All those squiggling patterns?
He’s well ahead of the group, moving rocks and climbing over icy shafts. The deeper they go, the brighter the luminescence becomes, lending a dreamlike quality to the overall pallor. Claustrophobic tunnels bud with clusters of materia, and the party moves without speaking. Puffs of breath and the occasional tumbling rock underfoot mark the only signs of their existence. Cloud forges ahead, and nobody asks how he knows the way or even if he does.
Trust, Tifa tells herself. She has to trust him. She brushes sweat from her forehead. The air is warmer here, and ice drips from coiled stalactites. Maturing crystallizations canvas the walls. A tinge of Mako rises, but it is unprocessed and pure, nothing like what churns within a Reactor. The smell is almost pleasant.
Tight passageways eventually open into an expansive cavern, glittering in low multi-tonal hues. Blue and green materia dominate, but purple and yellow splash here and there.
“How’s it possible we can breathe down here?” Barret asks.
Spindles of open darkness dot the ceiling. Cid points at them.
“Must be enough ventilation?”
Or something unnatural wants them to survive, Tifa wonders. Something creates an environment where a human could exist. Aerith must be here. Sephiroth, too. Would Cloud require any such atmosphere? He catches her eye and smiles.
“We must be deep in the Planet,” Nanaki says, sniffing the ground.
“Wowza, I wish I could pluck half of this materia free,” Yuffie says, tapping at a nearby crystal with her fingertips, but it is secure and unresponsive.
“Let’s continue,” Cloud says. “We’re close.”
Barret narrows his gaze. “An’ how you know that?”
Cloud halts, realizing ambiguities won’t be enough.
“Because,” he says, “I can…hear her.”
“Whatchu mean by that?”
Cloud looks at each of them while picking out his words. “There’s a hum in this place, whispers. I know that’s not comforting, but it’s how I can hear Jenova. And I think Aerith’s voice is in there.”
“What’s she saying?” Yuffie asks.
Cloud puts his hands on his hips. “Something not good. It’s unclear, but…”
“But what!” Barret pushes. “You better be clear with us on all this Jenova bullshit from here on out.”
Cloud rubs the back of his neck. “I know. I am. I just don’t know what to make of it.”
“Well, whatever it is,” Tifa interjects. “We have to hurry. We have to reach her if she’s near.”
Cloud nods and resumes the journey forward while Barret continues to grumble. The caves split ahead in multiple directions, but Cloud chooses without stopping, and the group carries on.
The route terminates into a fog-filled cavern with a single rock formation bridging an endless chasm. The length of the bridge is obscured, the footing treacherous. This is the only way across. Scintillating light from below plays odd shapes in the fog.
Cloud steps out, balances, and proceeds. Tifa remains close, careful not to look down. Heights never scared her, yet something else twists her nerves. Halfway across, Cloud pauses.
“Do you feel that?” he whispers to her.
There is silence, coldness. She listens, straining. No, nothing.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches. From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Countdown.
Preview of Chapter 34 - Defending Midgar
“I wasn’t myself.”
Cloud stands apart from the others beneath their collective solemn stare.
“No shit,” Barret says first. He’s been glaring since Cloud summoned the group to the bridge after a miraculous recovery from what should have been fatal Mako poisoning.
The co-pilots beside Cloud keep glancing up at him as he fidgets, arms crossed. There is silence except for the hum of the engines as the Highwind travels toward Midgar. Behind Cloud, the meteor hangs black and solid in its orange pool, contending with a hazy smear of sun.
“I… don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry.” It seems as good a place as any to start. Cloud catches Tifa’s eyes and continues. “I’m sorry that you were all brought along on this journey for reasons even I didn’t fully understand.”
He’s told them of the knowledge shared from Sephiroth, the truth about the meteor, his suspicions that Aerith remains in the north crater. He’s laid it all out, yet none of them seem convinced of his intentions. He neglects to mention that Aerith carries Jenova cells. He doesn’t want to alienate her, too, and Tifa doesn’t bring it up. Unspoken confidentiality binds the two of them. It feels good to have at least one person trusting him.
“An’ how we know you ain’t gonna transform into a brainwashed super-soldier again?” Barret says. “I saw you in Mideel. You were marchin’ around with those HKs. On Shinra’s side.”
Cloud had not told anyone about the Lifestream, not the gory details anyway. And there were plenty.
“As I’ve said,” Cloud replies, “we don’t need to worry about that anymore. I’m back to my old self.”
And what does that even mean? He sees the thought cross everyone’s expressions. Yuffie leans against a railing, ill with motion sickness. She’s been staring at him nonstop.
“Can you shapeshift?” she asks.
Cloud almost laughs, then he realizes everyone is waiting for his response.
“No,” he says, and he can’t believe he has to say this. “No, I can’t shapeshift.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Tentacles?”
“...What?”
“That monster had tentacles,” Yuffie says. “Are you the same?”
The heat from their attention draws into his cheeks. He uncrosses his arms, holds them wide, then lets them drop.
“No,” he reports. Yuffie does not seem satisfied.
“Can you die?” Barret wants to know. “Because that Jenova fucker seems pretty damn immortal to me.”
Cloud exchanges a look with Tifa. “Yes,” he says.
Cid exhales his cigarette and holds it between two fingers. His lance rocks from one palm to another.
“Well, I think we oughta be a helluva lot more concerned with what’s goin’ on out there—” he points to the meteor, “—than what’s in here.” He points at Cloud’s head.
Nanaki purrs in agreement. Yuffie resumes her eerie stare from an increasingly wan complexion. Tifa grabs the opportunity to steer the conversation away from Cloud.
“We have to reach Aerith,” she says. “If Aerith is still at the northern crater, she’s in danger.”
Barret argues that they can’t trust Cloud’s intuition, but Tifa won’t betray the intimacy of how Cloud is connected to Aerith, and Cid lights another cigarette, telling everyone they are wasting precious damn time. Midgar is on the horizon, and the plan now is for that Mako cannon to blast a hole in the barrier around the north crater.
“The Sister Ray,” Cloud corrects without meaning to. The official Shinra name sets it apart from other Mako cannon-type weapons.
Except the juice from the Reactors is going to attract a Weapon.
“We think,” Barret specifies.
Cloud knows. He’s seen the reports. He keeps quiet.
“So we defend the city,” Cid says, very much the captain. “Crack open that barrier, and rescue our pal.”
Yuffie sways. “Ugh, and get off this ship.”
Nanaki swishes his tail, nodding along. Cloud finds their solidarity comforting. At least they can rally around Aerith, even if he remains the pariah. He doesn’t require their acceptance. Only, perhaps, Tifa’s.
Barret holds up his hand. “An’ what about afterwards? We get Aerith, but that maniac Sephiroth still around somewhere, puppeteering his dead mother or whatever the hell is happenin’ there. And Shinra can barely fight these Weapons.”
Cloud bites his lip. Then he says quietly, uncertainly, “Aerith has a materia.”
“What? So?”
“A white materia. A balance.” Cloud chooses his words carefully because he does not fully understand what Aerith could have meant.
“Oh no,” Barret says. “No, no. Nope. We ain’t fuckin’ around with any other strange materia. We done. The Black Materia caused all this, and I’m not touchin’ anything else like it.”
Cloud remembers pressing the sword to Barret’s neck, reaching for the Black Materia, trembling and sweating. He sees that same memory crossing Barret’s stern frown.
“No,” Barret reiterates as if talking to a dog.
Cloud rolls his eyes. They’ll understand. Soon, they’ll all understand.
An alarm goes off near the captain’s chair. Everyone’s attention shifts from Cloud, much to his relief.
“Shit,” Cid says. “We won’t make it to Midgar first.”
The plan was to restock munitions from the Shinra depot in Sector Five. Cid knows a guy. But Midgar is still a gleaming dot of metal and steam far across the plains, and something large is pinging on radar.
“A Weapon,” Tifa says, eyes locked outside the windows.
In the ocean, a disturbance rises. It’s larger than any other Weapons, bipedal, with sleek, translucent silver armor. Massive shoulder blades protrude atop an exoskeleton of rigid joints and ribs. The center glows a deep luminous red that matches the multiple eyes that run on either side of a thick, arachnid skull. Two arms terminate in claws, and a skirt of bony armor protects its legs.
Nobody speaks as the Weapon steps from the waters at the shores of the continent, dripping waves of white foam. It is unlike the aquatic Weapon at Junon or the burrowing Weapon at Mideel. Cloud leans against the windows, parsing the Shinra knowledge in his head for any known facts on this species, coming up short.
“It’s here,” a mechanical voice speaks from the doorway.
Cloud spins to the threat. He knows that voice, despite the tinny distortions.
A hulking half-assembled HK unit steps onto the bridge, trailing wires like guts from its open chassis. The gun attached to one arm pivots without purpose, but the camera light is on. The conical featureless face is cracked.
Cloud’s hand hovers at the empty space near his back. Two equal reactions fight for control before he determines this is a Shinra unit that he must destroy.
“You,” he sneers. “You traitor.”
Cait Sith. The voice can be none other. And he remembers the betrayal at the Gold Saucer. That thief stole their keystone and ruined his date night.
“Whoa, wait, wait,” the HK unit buzzes. Rotors shift, and the head looks at Cloud. The unit backs up in an oddly human way.
Cloud isn’t waiting. He’s near enough to wrench those flimsy wires clean off when Cid intervenes.
“Hang on,” Cid says. “He’s not what you think.”
Tifa steps in. “This is Reeve. He saved us.”
“Reeve?” Cloud repeats. That name again. He struggles to reconcile his memories. Then he turns to Cait Sith inhabiting the HK body. “Director Reeve?”
The HK responds after a tick. “Yes.”
Cloud doesn’t want to let his anger dissipate. “You’re the Shinra spy?”
A director at the highest level of the c-suite, right in their midst, posing as a damn fortune teller in an amusement park. Cloud can’t hide his contempt.
“You betrayed us.”
The camera light blinks. “So did you, if we’re being technical.”
It’s scathing and unjust, and Cloud is about to punch a hole through that spider-cracked mirrored face, but Tifa stops him.
“No, wait,” she says. “Reeve saved our lives. Mine and Barret’s, in Junon!”
Cloud holds tense, his glare on Cait Sith. He knew about Tifa’s scheduled execution. He’d received the alert about her escape that day, but he hadn’t known her. Only an inkling of a forgotten intimacy plucked at him when he’d seen that she and Barret were missing from the gas chamber. He’d been sent to kill her, and shame now stymies his rage towards Cait. Reeve protected her when he could not.
“I see.” Cloud relinquishes his stance to neutral.
“Also, don’t even think about messin’ up my work,” Cid chimes in. “Took me a while to repair this unit so that Reeve could patch in. Isolating encrypted communications is iffy.”
Cait Sith addresses Cloud. “I’d tell you how I don’t agree with Shinra and why I’m here to help, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t believe me. So I’ll cut right to it.”
Cloud looks away in obvious displeasure. He won't trust any director of Shinra.
“The Weapon approaches the city, and the Sister Ray is charging up,” Reeve says through the HK. “I won’t be able to help you resupply the Highwind. I’m going to evacuate the city.”
There’s a muffled sound, like Reeve speaking to someone off the intercom. Then he comes back.
“I’m sorry, my friends. Shinra can’t spare the firepower. And Cloud…”
Stubbornness keeps Cloud looking away. He unwittingly finds himself watching the meteor.
“Cloud, they think you are dead.”
Something tugs at him. Disloyalty? He shrugs it off and does not respond.
“I have to go,” Reeve says, and there are noises of shuffling, muted shouts. “We’ll fire the cannon at the crater, and hope that Weapon doesn’t reach Midgar.”
The speaker goes dead. The HK unit whirs to a halt. For a while, nobody speaks, watching the green steam rising all around the ring of Midgar. Cid pilots the Highwind at an angle to keep the Weapon in view. There’s no mistake—the creature is coming towards the city, directly between the cannon and the north crater at the opposite ends of the sea.
“How does it know?” Yuffie asks.
“Could it be protecting the barrier?” Nanaki says.
And what would the barrier be protecting, Cloud wonders. The wound created by the Black Materia? The chaos that ensnared Aerith and left Cloud dead? Sephiroth, at the center of it all…
“Ah, who cares,” Cid says. “It’s a giant monster, and we gotta stop it!”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches. From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Preview of Chapter 33 - From the Edge of Despair
He awakens in a dark room with the hum of machinery all around. There are things in his arm, needles, and he tears them out. He’s lying on an uncomfortable cot, and he’s wearing someone else’s shirt that smells like cigarettes. But at least the Mako is gone. Yes, he rubs his forearms. It’s all gone, except a trace beneath his fingernails. All gone, except the parts floating inside him.
He still feels sick, a wash of intense nausea that seems to emanate from every organ. This is Mako poisoning. He’s felt it before when he woke up in the Shinra Tower once. Or twice. How many times had he woken up there, with the professor’s lenses gleaming under a bright light?
He’s not in the Shinra Tower now. It comes back in pieces like scattered photographs out of order. He was in Nibelheim, talking to… no, he was in an ancient city with structures that spiraled like seashells. Then, he was in a glacial landscape. And a seaside port.
Then it strikes him full force. He jolts upright.
“Tifa!” She’d fallen into a churning pool of pure Mako. Pure poison. His head hurts. He must’ve fallen in, too. No, that’s not right. He jumped. He couldn’t bear to think of her drowning in it.
And then what? Sudden sequences assault him. He remembers, in keen detail, the Nibel Reactor now. He’d stabbed Sephiroth in the back. He’d knelt by Tifa’s side. He’d...been killed. He remembers dying; what a strange thought.
And he remembers the basement. The Shinra Mansion thrives with inexplicable agony. Jenova had become one with him there. It created him out of a husk.
He releases a breath and cradles his head in the darkness.
This must be an airship. Shinra-issue by the looks of it. The single port window shows moonlit clouds, but he can’t see the ground, can’t tell where they could be headed. Why does Shinra have him again? He recalls pulling Tifa out of the Mako, dragging her onto sand and dirt, and then waking to a terrible earthquake. A Weapon was digging and burrowing and destroying. He had to fight it; that was his mission.
“Tifa…” She must be nearby. He must’ve passed out, and Shinra picked them up.
He’d been working with them, he knows. The drones walked alongside him in Mideel. It’s all a sickening blur, the head of that civilian popping like a cherry under the HK’s guns, splattering across his uniform. He looks down and sees wires connected to monitoring devices taped to his chest. He rips those off, too. His eyes adjust to the dimness. He would turn on the light, but that could alert Shinra to his status. They don’t have him restrained, which is good. That means they think he’s still under their control.
He sighs. Their control meant death, he recalls now. The north crater collapsed when the Weapons emerged, and Hojo had… He’d awoken at the Shinra Tower, but he remembers dying. The pain of it. The endless crushing restraint of darkness growing darker, muscles fading into unresponsiveness. Panic firing off as survival instincts malfunction. Dying.
But it’s over. He’s awake now, and he must find Tifa.
I made a dumb… advertisement?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Zack never survived the Nibel Reactor and therefore couldn't rescue Cloud from Hojo's clutches. From this single point of divergence, the story unfolds.
Like a man possessed.
Preview of Chapter 32 - Not once, did the light in the basement go out...
This isn’t the Reactor. The door closes into a shadowed, cool interior that smells of musty books. Tifa is in a long corridor of dim blue lighting. Someone is at the end, rustling through papers. She’s underground, judging by the vaulted wooden beams in the ceiling. She turns, and behind her is the laboratory.
She’s in the Shinra Mansion basement. No, this can’t be right. She turns again, unable to understand the teleportation trick because she was sure she had entered the Nibel Reactor. That is the source of Cloud’s missing memory from that night, and that’s what she was focusing on when she walked over that threshold.
Yet now she’s in the basement. Again.
But things are different. There’s no sign of the dead MP. The laboratory is dark and humming with minimal activity.
There’s murmuring down the hall, a tearing of pages. Exasperated sighs.
She tiptoes forward. The library is a small circular room at the terminus opposite the lab. Binders of research notes line the shelves. There are very few traditional books. It seems to be a private collection or an archive.
A man sits on the floor with papers spread around him. He’s tracing lines from one set of documents to another with one finger. He seems very distraught, and, even with his back to the door, Tifa is quite sure she knows who this is. The silver hair and black uniform are unmistakable.
It’s the General, but he isn’t like she remembers. The calm and confident man she’d once been thrilled to take a photo with is distracted, harried, long hair tied in a disheveled bun. The obsessive aura reminds her of Cloud’s unnatural determination to track Sephiroth—but where is Cloud? This can’t be one of his memories. Sephiroth is alone in this basement.
He slouches over a new set of books, flipping through and scanning.
“Sephiroth,” a voice says from the hall.
Tifa jumps, expecting it to be Cloud, but it’s that First-Class SOLDIER, Zack.
“One of the guys said you were down here,” Zack says, easing into the library.
Sephiroth doesn’t look up, but he acknowledges Zack with a grunt.
“So, the mission is over, right?” Zack says. “I mean, we stopped those monsters from attacking the town. HQ will want to know—”
“I’ll deal with HQ,” Sephiroth interrupts in a low voice, poring over the research. “The mission is over when I say it is.”
Zack adjusts the sword on his back. It’s a broadsword so similar to the one Cloud favors that Tifa gets the uncanny sense of him standing right there. Even the way Zack crosses his arms is reminiscent of Cloud.
The SOLDIER runs a hand through his raven-black hair and exhales.
“How long you been down here?” he asks.
Sephiroth ignores him.
“When was the last time you slept?” Zack steps closer. “Or ate?”
He speaks to the General as if they are friends. This shouldn’t be surprising—she recalls Zack saying Sephiroth and he were the only First-Class SOLDIERs remaining—yet Tifa had placed Sephiroth as an inhuman murderer. She can’t imagine him ever having friends. Yet here is one in sympathetic appeal.
“You should get some rest.”
“Listen to this,” Sephiroth says, grabbing the open binder on the desk. He reads from it, “An organism that was apparently dead was found in a two-thousand year-old geological stratum.” He skips ahead a few paragraphs. “Professor Gast named that organism Jenova.”
He pauses for emphasis and looks at Zack. Tifa notices the brilliance of his emerald eyes, seeking understanding.
Zack scratches his head.
Sephiroth huffs and reads on, skipping over the dates, “X year, X month, X day. Jenova confirmed to be an Ancient.”
“This stuff is so old…”
Sephiroth holds up a finger as if baiting anticipation and grabs another research binder. Papers scatter around his feet. Tifa moves into the library against one wall, and the two do not react to her at all. She is an observer, nothing more.
“Y year, Y month, Y day. Jenova Project approved. Mako Reactor One approved for use.” Sephiroth pauses, and hungry eyes sweep the mess of notes on the floor. “The Jenova Project, don’t you see?!”
Zack doesn’t look convinced.
Sephiroth rattles on, “My mother’s name is Jenova... Jenova Project... Is this just a coincidence?”
“I don’t know…”
“You remember what we saw in the Reactor. That doorway marked J.E.N.O.V.A. None of this is a coincidence. It can’t be.”
A feverish look overtakes the General. He is once more lost in the research. Tifa glimpses the Shinra logo stamped bright red atop each page.
“Sephiroth… You need to sleep. Who cares what a bunch of old smelly books say? It’s probably outdated nonsense.” But even Zack doesn’t sound like he believes this. He’s trying to console his friend.
The General isn’t listening. “Professor Gast... Why didn’t you tell me anything? Why did you die?” He pulls a fresh stack from the shelves and sits back down in his circle of scatterings.
“...Sephiroth.” Zack reaches out, but the General halts him.
“Let me be alone.”
Zack lingers like he wants to say more, but then he leaves. The memory goes on, however, and Tifa realizes this must be an echo of someone else in the Lifestream. Not Cloud.
