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Aerith sat on the precipice of the universe and watched him as he gorged himself.
Her planet wasn’t the only life-bearing rock in the universe. Did it have a name? Perhaps it did, once upon a time, but she had forgotten it long ago, its syllables sliding off her tongue and evaporating into the cosmos. There were others, vibrant and lively, rotating peacefully around their own suns; they were full of lush grass, blue skies, rolling hills, prosperous beings and vast currents of Lifestream, snaking through the soil like roots on a tree.
He devoured them all. One by one, each quicker than the last.
The screams had grown shorter. He had grown efficient—and impatient. Whatever he sought wasn’t satisfying him, and all Aerith could do was stand vigil as Sephiroth feasted on their souls and threw the bones into the ether.
He would come back. She knew he would, because they were one and the same: two celestial beings, fated to exist in the liminal space between universes. The only difference was that her immortality came from a different source, her mother’s power so very different from his—but did it matter? Here, where years flitted by in seconds and miles shrunk to inches, did it really matter? It once mattered a great deal to her, but she couldn’t find it within herself to care anymore. All that once defined her had long since died; the stars could no longer tell the difference.
An eternity passed by in the blink of an eye. Aerith looked to her feet, looked back up, and he was there, kneeling on a star. His chest heaved. His eyes were watering. Streaks of saliva ran down his mouth, drying on his jaw. As Aerith approached, she marvelled at his appearance; whatever monstrous form he’d concocted had been short-lived. He had transformed himself into a god, and yet he looked exactly the same.
And she was a god too, really. Aerith knew the truth wouldn’t satisfy him either: that being a god was a dull, weary, never-ending ordeal, as mundane as they were extraordinary.
“Sephiroth.” She held out her arms. “Welcome home.”
Her bloodstained dress still hung off her in tatters. The wound on her stomach wept, cold blood dripping down her skin. Sephiroth’s eyes lingered on it. “Home?” he croaked, his eyes drifting up to meet hers. “This is home?”
“It will have to be,” she said grimly. “You devoured everything else.”
The weight of her words slowly sunk in. Would he grieve? Feel regret? Could he even remember the lives he'd taken? The futures he'd extinguished in his quest for fulfillment? Sephiroth stood perfectly still, a frozen vessel for the emotions raging inside him. When Aerith embraced him, her weeping stomach pressed against his cheek, he embraced her in kind.
He had nothing left. And neither did she.
“You’re home,” she whispered gently. He began to tremble, his arms tightening around her waist; she could hear him inhale, as if he were about to scream. His screams, however, would go on for an eternity. “You’re home.”