Chapter Text
When Tifa was a child she watched a rocket rise up over the mountains.
The whole town came out for the launch on that cloudy winter morning, even the grumpy scientists in the Shinra Manor stood on the balconies to watch. The teacher led her class out onto the football field and had them sit in a row on the spiky grass while they waited.
The light came first. A golden outline crested Mount Nibel, turning the mountain into a black silhouette. The band of gold grew thicker and brighter, swallowing up more of the mountaintop. Then the sound, like a low hum on the edge of hearing, then the crackling of a storm on the other side of the mountains. It grew into a roar she felt shaking in her bones.
One of the boys, Cloud, cried out and pointed.
The rocket rose up above them.
A long red tube with fire and billowing smoke exploding out of the bottom, dyeing half the mountain and the fields of Nibelheim with speckled gold. It didn’t look like it was moving very fast, rising straight up in the sky. Like all that power was moving in slow motion. And still it felt like only a moment until it disappeared behind the clouds. She could have sworn she didn’t breathe once through the whole thing.
She didn’t stop watching the smoke-streaked sky and the now mundane looking mountain until the class had already gone back inside and the teacher was calling her name.
The moment stayed with her for the rest of her life.
It was something of a joke among astronauts. You never forgot your first.
When the boys looked to Midgar and talked about SOLDIER, she had her eyes fixed to the mountain and the endless sky above it. It felt like the stars were just waiting for her. She followed all the news, the moon landing, the space station, the satellites and telescopes.
She studied hard and at fourteen got an apprenticeship. Tifa was a good mathematician, an average engineer, but a very good hand with the experimental materia Shinra produced to power the new rockets.
Rocket Town was a long way from home though, and it was isolating. Shera was a good teacher and a kind mentor, of course, and Cid was… his charming self, but she missed her family.
She loved the stars. But it was just work.
After a couple of years, she was the one in the capsule at the top of a rocket. The whole thing shook, her helmet weighed heavier than it ever had in training, and she was terrified. Beside her Shera grinned.
In the endless voice of space she looked down at the blue and green so far away. So little. It stretched out like a little map, with tiny clouds casting long shadows across the surface. Her own breath was so loud inside the suit, and beyond her there was no noise at all. Perfect silence between her and the entirety of the planet. There was Nibelheim, too small to see except for the green glow on the mountain, just another part of the tapestry. She reached out a hand towards it. So precious. So… fragile. What were they all doing, fighting over such silly things? Didn’t they see how beautiful it was?
She felt the same awe she had watching her first rocket rise into the sky.
“Tifa?” Shera called.
She swallowed through the lump in her throat and felt a giddy laugh bubbling up inside her.
“I can see my house from here,” she said.
Shera chuckled. “Is your dad home?”
“He’ll be glued to the TV watching for updates.”
If Shinra were broadcasting updates then they would be good ones. The mission went off without a hitch, Tifa performed very well according to all reports and herself, she privately thought.
They came home to the news that Nibelheim had been destroyed.
Nobody would say what had happened, only that a war hero had died, and the destruction of the town was hushed up. TIfa railed at Shinra for it, she screamed and wept, and tried to climb the mountain to see for herself. Shera and Cid talked her down from it.
There was nothing she could do. She had a life here, her father would have wanted her to live it. So they said. It was a life Shinra paid for, but she had nothing else. There was no home to go back to.
She raised her eyes to the heavens. Fragile, ugly, little Gaia had nothing left for her.
The next time she sat in the command capsule of a rocket, she wasn’t afraid. Cid and Shera were both with her, alongside a couple of other crew members, a row of hypersleep pods, and enough fuel to get them beyond the solar system. There had been rumblings about reactor bombings in Midgar during the lead up, but it didn’t interfere.
They left Gaia behind. They had been afraid of the mako-based technology failing when they got too far from Gaia, but it did no such thing, the power core humming happily even as the little blue dot disappeared behind the sun. There was nothing holding them back.
The universe stretched out before them.
Life was a complex thing. More vast and varied than the forms native to Gaia would suggest.
Tifa walked in the light of new suns and learned just how small her world was, how simplistic her perspective. Some planets welcomed them, others didn’t. They made friends and lovers and enemies, they upgraded their ship and took on new crew members and left others behind on new homes. The spiritual Life cycle she had once thought to be merely superstition was present on all other inhabited worlds.
Time passed. It had already, they had slept for centuries on their initial voyage, and they spent decades more exploring.
Tifa didn’t like staying on any one planet for too long. Her skin itched and she looked back to the skies. It didn’t matter how wonderful and welcoming a planet was, it wasn’t home.
In time, even Shera and Cid grew roots. It was a giant planet with a small population, and a life stream that matched them both nicely. Cid finally grew a spine and proposed to the woman who had been at his side all his life. Tifa clapped at the ceremony, held under the shadow of the planet’s rings according to the local customs, and she realised the two of them would never leave this place.
She was the only one left.
She hugged Shera tightly.
Shera pulled back, and brushed away the tear dripping down Tifa’s cheek.
“Aren’t you tired of running, Tifa?”
“No,” she retorted, weakly. She wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself back together. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not running anywhere.”
“Okay.” Shera smiled, still gentle and kind as ever. She squeezed her hands. “You’ll always be welcome here with us.”
Tifa forced a smile and hugged her again.
She got back on the ship some time later. It had been updated and overhauled with the vastly superior technologies multiple times, it barely had any pieces of the original left. There was no sign of Gaian technology anywhere in the cockpit. She sat in the pilot’s seat and strapped in.
It was very quiet.
She slowly bowed her head.
She could go anywhere. Chart stars, explore nebulas, uncover secrets of the universe. Discover new life, again.
Her shoulders sank.
She loved the stars, she did. She’d lived a full life among them, but they weren’t… home. She didn’t have one of those.
Shera’s words haunted her. She was tired of running.
Deep within the ship’s navi-computer there were coordinates. The first coordinates, by which all the others had been measured. She closed her eyes, sucked in a shaky breath and let it back out again, then selected it.
It felt right.
It was a long flight, albeit significantly faster than it had been the other way. It was still long enough for her to stew on her decision, and change her mind about a dozen times. She never once changed trajectory, but it was a close thing.
The reality of it settled under her ribs. She was going back. She had to see what became of it all.
She dropped out of FTL on the outer ring of the solar system.
The familiar golden glow of the sun made her smile. It put her in mind of a little girl, long ago, sitting on spiky grass and watching a bulky rocket disappear into the sky.
She flew closer, passing the outer planets. The ships sensors gave readouts for all of them, and even before she reached it, Gaia’s Lifestream’s ambient signal got picked up by the sensors.
She slowed down as she got closer, and the sensors gave incomprehensible readouts. She stared.
Gaia was… changed.
The little ball of blue and green glowed. It was so vivid it almost hurt to look at. Bands of the Lifestream danced, visible, miles above the surface, in great controlled arcs. She had never seen anything like it. It was so bright and overwhelming the sensors couldn’t even detect where the population centres were.
It was so beautiful. Unrecognisable from the slowly rusting thing it had been when last she saw it. Thank the stars, they must have stopped using Mako reactors. Not that that was enough to explain it, she couldn’t understand what could have done this. The landmasses didn’t look the same. There must have been at least one cataclysm, the measly two hundred years she had been away wasn’t long enough for this level of change to naturally occur.
She admired it for a moment. She couldn’t deny the surge of affection she felt looking at the Old Girl. Or the strangest sense of loss. She didn’t know this world. It was as alien as any other planet she’d discovered.
The controls started to beep. She looked over at the console, and frowned. That alert didn’t make any sense. She flipped a switch but nothing happened. The sensors beeped out alarms and two of the screens flashed and then shut down. One was the navi-computer. The ship was still moving, and already close enough for the planet to take up all of her view window.
She yanked back on the controls. The ship did react, sluggishly, it halted its trajectory. The bands of Lifestream passed overhead.
“What the-?” she muttered, flipping switches and trying to restart the dead screens on her dash.
“Tifa Lockhart,” a deep voice called.
She froze, all her hairs standing on end. She looked up. There was nothing to see. Only a vast green planet, vibrant and overflowing with life.
“Welcome home,” the voice said. It felt like it slid through her, smooth and slightly curious.
Her mouth opened then snapped shut again. She felt watched.
“Thank you,” she managed.
How were they interfacing with her? It wasn’t coming through the ship’s speakers. She was fascinated and wary and a tiny bit touched that they, whoever and whatever they might be, had actually remembered her.
“Who am I speaking to?”
There was a very long pause.
“I am Sephiroth.”
It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. It had been a long time since she’d given much thought to the minutiae of this world. It was amazing enough that they spoke the same language.
“Nice to meet you, Sephiroth.”
The voice hummed, sounding amused.
“Can you direct me to a landing pad, please?” She hadn’t seen any vessels in the star system, but if they could speak to her with no apparent means she couldn’t assume.
The navi-computer screen lit up again with new planetside coordinates logged within it.
Had the voice disabled it in the first place?
Unease slid down her spine. She braced herself for whatever might come, and flew down to meet her fate head on.
The sensors completely lost the plot and she found herself stuck piloting the old way, purely by sight. She passed over oceans, and caught glimpses of giant things moving under the water. The coordinates led her down over a lush wilderness, no where near a city and certainly not a landing pad.
She didn’t recognise any of it.
She set the ship down on a patch of thick, sapphire grass.
Before her, staring up at her through the one way viewing window, stood a human man in a black leather coat. She stared back.
On a planet utterly foreign and two hundred years removed from everything she ever knew, he was familiar.
And he was waiting for her.
She turned everything off, set the drive core to cool, and opened the ramp. She stood at the top, looking down.
Standing in the knee high grass below was the man who called himself Sephiroth.
Long silver hair and smooth leather drifted in the wind around him, shining in the sunlight. She searched his clothes for some kind of insignia or identification, but there was none. Generally people came out to meet her in either hazmat suits or military uniforms. Or asking for landing pad parking fees.
He was holding a sword, but it wasn’t at the ready.
He studied her intently, and she felt more exposed than she did at most first contacts. Which was silly, this wasn’t first contact, it was her home world, for planet’s sake.
She would have to treat it as such though. It had been too long, the cultures must have drifted vastly. She would be as obliging as possible while getting a feel for the place.
He didn’t say anything or make any move, so she braced herself and bit the bullet. She walked down the ramp, her back straight, and the most inexplicable butterflies in her stomach. She stepped onto the soft earth.
“Hi,” she said with a bright smile. Best foot first. “I’m Tifa. I think we spoke earlier.”
She extended a hand to him. She was ninety nine percent certain handshakes had been a Gaian thing.
He titled his head curiously, still studying her. He gently took her hand and she felt something like a static zap through her veins. She narrowed her eyes. His own eyes were impossibly green, like the colour of spirit energy.
“You have touched many planets,” he said, relinquishing her hand. “Their energies emanate from you.”
“You can sense that, can you?”
“Come. Walk with me.” He gestured towards a rise in the plains.
“I don’t want to leave my ship unattended.” It was the first thing people who wished them harm typically did, ground them and try to take the ship for themselves.
“We won’t go far.”
She hesitated.
“Nothing will touch it. This land is peaceful.”
She looked around. There was no visible sign of anyone else, just rolling hills with patches of forest and grazing animals. Crystalline insects with wings of fluttery silk hovered just above the sapphire grass, the light refracting through them to paint little shimmering rainbows everywhere. She could hear them buzzing. Water roared in the distance, and wheeling birds called out far above them. Was it peaceful? She supposed so.
“Planets are so much louder than space,” she said, locking the ship remotely.
He blinked and looked around. “Is it loud?”
“It’s nice. Lively.” She gestured for him to lead the way. “You don’t know how quiet things can get until you’re the only living thing for dozens of light years in every direction.”
“Indeed.”
He turned to walk up the rise.
She followed slightly behind to study him. He was the first human besides Shera, Cid, and the two others since she had last stood on this planet. He stalked through the grass, about a foot taller than her, strong and beautiful and slightly... ethereal. She recognised that, separate from her recognition of his face. She made a private bet with herself: that wasn’t his real form.
He stopped at the top of a small knoll overlooking a river and further plains. A flock of birds rose from the grass at their arrival, a noisy flutter of gold and green wings, and barbed tentacles in place of legs. They rose above the plains and disappeared into the sky, splashing through the nearest band of Lifestream.
One of the towering trees nearby snatched a couple out of the air with its branches. There was a crunch and little puffs of loose feathers drifted to the ground.
Tifa watched them go, curious and fascinated. This was nothing like the wildlife she remembered, but she had come to love the sheer variations of life across the galaxy.
Sephiroth stabbed his sword into the ground and seemed content to wait while she stared at everything. She seized the opportunity.
A river, deep and dark and frothy with the power of its currents churned beneath them. Cold water splashed against her bare legs.
On the other side of it, large scaled quadrupeds with many eyes grazed on the plains. Most were sleeping lazily in the shadow of the trees dotted here and there. Further away a herd of enormous furry things she had no name for wandered along, with veins of liquid mako glowing visibly through their thick skin. They moved slowly, like heavy rain clouds rolling along. One of the largest creatures kept reaching out with its trunk to redirect a playful little one trying to chase birds.
There was no sign of artificial structures anywhere. No spires of cities in the distance or reinforcements to the river bank. Not even a stray radio tower. It was true wilderness.
Not the dying wilderness of Shinra’s Mako empire, these weren’t monsters, just strange animals, thriving in their natural habitat. Not one of them looked alarmed at two human silhouettes watching them. Something inside of her twisted up a little at it, beautiful though it was.
“You have been gone for a very long time,” Sephiroth said quietly.
She sighed. “I guess I have.” She looked back at him. “I’m surprised you knew me.”
“You have a piece of Old Gaia in you.”
Old Gaia? Pre-cataclysm, presumably.
“Is your body from Old Gaia?”
“...What?”
“Are you taking on a form you think will be familiar to me? Easier for me to talk to?” she asked, holding her hands behind her back. “You’re a shapeshifter, right?”
“This is one of my bodies, one that comes naturally to me,” he said slowly. He raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”
She smiled, vindicated at her own guess.
“There’s a certain look to beings of pure spirit energy.” They tended to have odd mannerisms too. “When did Gaians make the jump to communing with the living Lifestream?”
He looked at her with renewed scrutiny.
“Some time ago. You are not surprised.”
“Surprised? I’m amazed! It hasn’t been that long, it usually takes thousands of years for species to figure it out. Especially given the state of this place, it’s healthier than it ever was in my time.” She gestured at the lush and thriving wilds. “Newly communing planets tend to go through about five hundred years of ecological instability while everyone figures it out.”
“Ah.” He nodded sharply. “But you have seen it before?”
“Not like this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a planet like this before.” One of the soaring bands of visible lifestream passed overhead, momentarily dying the sunlight emerald green. She breathed in sharply. The change in light revealed a school of silvery fish swimming upstream along the river, each with elaborate patterns glowing along their scales. “It’s so beautiful.”
He smiled wistfully for a moment. “It is. But you didn’t come here for that. Why have you returned?”
“Our mission was to learn about the cosmos then come back and tell everyone about it.”
He did not look moved. “Is that all?”
She looked away. “I.. wanted to see my homeworld again.”
“To establish a forward base for your new allies?”
“No! No, I’m not doing anything like that. And neither are they.”
He raised an eyebrow and approached her, slowly. “Why not?”
“Well…” she harrumphed. She was an explorer, not a colonist, thank you very much. She didn’t care what Shinra’s initial plans had been. “I didn’t make friends with any of the nations who acted that way. And frankly, even if I had, we’re in the middle of the Perseus Veil here. I bet you don’t get a lot of visitors?”
“The last was over two thousand years ago.”
“Navigation is a nightmare in this cluster. And I have the only ship with the relevant star maps,” she said, earnestly. “Nobody else is coming.”
He studied her for a long moment, and she realised a second too late that she shouldn’t have given that information away. It must have shown on her face.
“I believe you,” he said and drew back.
She let out a breath. He was a very intense presence. It put her mind of when she had been summoned before the ruling council of Io, on their crystal thrones within the planet core.
“Tell me about these other worlds,” Sephiroth said.
She shook her head. “I need you to tell me a few things first.” She’d given enough away already. “What happens now? Am I allowed to stay here for a while? Do I need to register with anyone, go through customs? Are there limits on where I can go?”
“You may stay,” he decreed. “Eat of the plains as you will.”
Then he melted into green wisps of spirit energy and was gone.
“Oh- okay.”
Spirit people. She’d never met one who could grasp why embodied people exchanged goodbyes before leaving.