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It was different, this time. The memories of the last time were faded and fractured, but Aerith knew it was different. She did not come here before, past the expansive snowdrifts or through the biting walls of wind on the far side of the sheer rock. No, she had never seen it before, or perhaps she had, somewhere in memory beyond memory.
Her dear friends waited for her, gathered on the cavern floor. Aerith drifted up, up, up, through the air, alighting on the crystalline vines running spider-webbed across the cave's roof, gravity forgotten. It gave them something to look at other than the purple and yellow welts colouring her thin arms. Sweet, blameless Cloud never looked her in the eye at all. He hadn’t grasped the scope of their victory; perhaps none of them had. The black materia was safe in her care, asleep with its sister. When she finished, her friends would all receive her with warm and open arms. She had done so well, this time.
The vines laid a snaking, winding path out in front of her, and Aerith walked it. She curled her tongue against her teeth, a soundless recitation of a new word. It was in her mother tongue, one of precious few. <Lyre>. <Lyre>, she said, rolling the word in her mouth to see how it felt, trying to understand what she was supposed to do with it. She'd never seen a lyre. Only a marble model of one, clutched in the tender hands of a poet who walked down, down, down deep, into death and back empty-handed.
Still one more thing to do.
Her people had known the lyre story, too. She recognized it etched on the walls of a crumbling ruin and stood for ages in front of it, straining to make meaning from it. Death, cleansing, rebirth. Ancient journeys to their holiest of places, all lost now if they ever existed, all the singing pilgrims turned to dust. The relief showed her secrets foreign and cherished and irrelevant and useless and all Aerith could make out from it was 'lyre.'
The cave’s crystal walls reflected and refracted her endlessly, her and only her, alone on the ceiling practicing nonsense words. In the centre of the web, Sephiroth waited, or his body did, or what was left of it, trapped in crystal. She could feel him, walking up in the air with her and following a few paces behind, but the crystal mirrors refused to show him. When she stood face to face with his body, peering through the crystal that held it, she tried to think he looked peaceful this way.
Her hand parted the crystal like water. Reaching out toward him, she spread her fingers, laid her palm against his naked chest over where his heart ought to have been. It felt more like ice than skin. Behind her, outside of himself, Sephiroth watched. The walls told their lies, but Aerith could see his face reflected on the shimmering surface of his own prison. His expression was still and knowing; she no longer wondered what he saw as he watched her. Blood and struggle, no matter how clean and quiet.
It won't be the last time. The crystal mirror showed him looming behind her, his mouth near the shell of her ear. She felt only the wind in the silence of the cavern. You'll need to keep fighting.
And you? Aerith's tongue was still, but the reflection of her mouth moved to form the question. Behind her, Sephiroth nodded once, acid eyes burning.
And me.
She frowned at their reflections, frowned at the white materia held loosely in the hand at her side. Almost time to wake it up.
Does it always end the same?
Do you remember the bite of my sword? The dark water of the lake? He smiled a strange and mirthless smile, one that mirrored the weight still sitting in her chest. Do you remember the virus, the sisters and brothers that we stole from this hungering Planet? You do, and it brings you to this point each time, doesn’t it?
Aerith lifted her chin up higher and gave her answer in defiance.
Do you remember hope?
You always seem to, Sephiroth smiled again, when it ends.
Death on the walls of the dead. What made it so holy, anyway?
Try again, she commanded, tired of this now. The materia hummed in her grasp. Forget what's already happened. Stop looking back.
Slowly, white light began to gather around her hand on his chest. The crystal lit up like a sun, too bright for her to see inside of it anymore, too bright even to make out the ghosts on its surface. Holy came like she had called it a thousand times before. It shattered the crystal, Sephiroth with it. Glittering shards of ice and rock rained down through the cavern.
"<Lyre>."
Aerith murmured the pointless word to herself again, one hand stretched out to nothing.