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On the other side of death, Sephiroth awakens to a stark metal door.
His new body is a thing of impulse. The first inklings of his consciousness return to him while it’s in motion, Masamune in the middle of a graceful, deadly arc. Distantly, he recognizes its weight, and the building he’s bloodying. The void between waking and dreaming seems to sprawl out for epochs as he fights his way back. While his body carries him along the red carpets and familiar corridors, his mind yet thrashes across the threshold.
Before that door, he is himself again. He knows immediately where he is.
Impulse has carried him here, too, some misfire in his limbic system at the end of his rampage. It’s an old, unbroken habit, returning to a deserted wing of the labs to stare at this door. A familiar ache creeps in. What once lived behind it is gone, and should never return, no matter how much he’s always hated the empty space left in its place. The President’s blood drips from his blade and spells out his purpose in red droplets on the tile. He has had his satisfaction. There is nothing left for him here, and he knows it’s time to leave.
Only, he doesn’t. Instead, Sephiroth moves forward, passing through the thick metal like a ghost, into a room that isn’t empty at all.
Under the swirls of fading colour on the far wall, a young woman is waking. She rubs sleep from her eyes and rises slowly from the creaking cot, a flower unfolding. The differences in her mark out the years. A leaner face, brighter clothes, longer limbs, but she wears her hair the same as she always did. It was the way her mother fixed it, tied with a pink ribbon. Love and memory, too precious to part with.
Breath leaves him. Aerith is here, here, with him, as though he has willed her present to witness his own rebirth. Perhaps he has; Gods are meant for working miracles.
Sephiroth steps forward, his hand stretched towards her.
Impulse.
Ache.
As soon as she senses that she’s no longer alone, Aerith is on her feet, squinting into the darkness. The shadow in the doorway grows nearer. She presses the heels of her palms against her eyes to clear them (to hide the fear in them) and looks again. Black and silver and soft, glowing green. Wintry eyes full of quiet knowing. Her heart catches in her throat, put there by something stronger than fear. Not a shadow, but a phantom. A figure from an old dream, crossed into the waking world.
“It’s you,” she murmurs in awe, her own voice scratching against her throat. She thought she’d never seen him again, outside of the newspapers. “Am I still dreaming? They said… they said you were dead, but,” she smiles even though her eyes are prickling, nearly laughs at the bittersweet strangeness of it, “but here you are, getting me out of this awful room again. Funny.”
Memories of this place feed all of her nightmares. Still, there were bright spots - her mother, and the older boy who indulged her demands for chalk and paint and watched her splatter it carelessly over the walls like it was the most beautiful, liberating thing he had ever seen. When it was time to leave for good, they had steeled themselves by saying a tearful goodbye to the mural together, Sephiroth’s hand wrapped around hers so tightly…
Now, through the darkness, his hand reaches out to her again. Aerith steps forward to take it. A bolt of foreboding shoots through her. Her hand freezes mid-air, in the pooling overhead light, even before she spots the wicked, bloody blade held in his slack hand. Something is wrong. Something about Sephiroth is wrong. He still looks like himself, striking and beautiful, but he stares at her unblinking and moves like he doesn’t know his own skin. For a fraction of a second, Aerith thinks she glimpses something crawling underneath.
Her fingers curl in, away from Sephiroth’s waiting hand. Across from her, he frowns, and slowly his arm sinks back to his side.
“What happened?” Aerith asks, beginning to fear the answer. “You’re… different.” Wrong, something primal in her repeats.
“Yes,” Sephiroth answers softly, his eyes shining.
Different. Once or twice in the library, in the space between the turning pages, he saw her face, heard her voice naming him. They had been strange children. She spoke to spectres and even though he couldn’t hear them, he could feel them, always on the edge of his senses. Two lonely little mystics sharing a secret world. When she was young she had boldly proclaimed that he might be like her, that it was what made him (them) so different.
“You were right about me, all those years ago. I am different.”
Her eyes widen, full of a naked hope. “Really? You’re… Cetra?”
For a moment, he wants to tell her what he knows she wants to hear; but this truth is too important, and he wants too badly for her to know it.
“I am more. I met my mother." He says it with pride and his arms swept open as if to show her, because he’s certain she will know what it means to him. "I met myself.”
Her hands curl tight against her chest, but Aerith keeps her eyes on him. She’s still listening closely.
“The Promised Land,” he begins, his thoughts growing fractured and frantic. He can feel his eyes burning as he passes them over the mural on the wall behind her, paint peeling away from the cold metal underneath. “Shinra will not have it. No human will. They will have not an inch more. I am taking it back. For my mother.”
His vision goes black, overwhelmed by swelling conviction; it’s too much to feel and see all at once. When it returns, his body has moved on its own again. His free hand alights on her shoulder as he cranes down towards her, his face brought imploringly close to hers. Impulse wants her even closer, crushed into his chest, breathing from the same lungs. He looks her meaningfully in the eye. “For those chosen by the Planet.”
Through a fall of white hair, he studies her expression, notices the knit of her brow and the way her shoulders have drawn up under his touch. There’s understanding in her eyes, but something in them seems… sad, almost. Why? He pulls away. It surprises him when she catches him by the wrist, her small hand halting him with such gentle force.
“Something’s… about to happen…” she says slowly, in a cadence normally reserved for the spectres. He supposes he’s one of them, now. “What are you going to do?”
There’s worry in her voice, but his face breaks into a smile. At last, the future is bright, now that it's his hand which guides it.
“All this suffering… I’m going to end it. Everything will end with me. So will it begin.” His eyes drift to the mural again and the ache in his chest turns to anger. Spring flowers painted in a child’s hand to drive back the darkness. Wretched things for a wretched world that he swears to unmake. “No more painted cages.”
Aerith’s fingers go slack around his wrist.
Aerith balls her hand into a fist as she pulls it away from Sephiroth’s wrist. He’s still smiling gently at her, and her mind buzzes with questions she doesn't want to ask. The most important one, she asks anyway.
“... An end? Like the winter, with spring to follow?” Or like the long dark of oblivion, where no flowers will ever grow?
Sephiroth says nothing. The way his smile widens, it’s like he doesn’t know how to wear it. Wrong. All wrong.
Once more, he holds out a hand. “If you understand, then come with me. We'll see it done together.”
“I don’t understand." Aerith shakes her head vigorously. "An end to Shinra is one thing, but… what you’re really looking for is a new beginning, isn’t it?” She chews her lip and folds her arms across herself. It's true for her, too, and she’s only just bringing herself to admit it. Leaving Midgar and finding her Promised Land had never seemed possible, until...
“... I made some friends, just lately," she starts. Her words are halting, but she smiles to herself as she speaks them. "Real ones – the first I’ve had since you. I was in trouble and... They’re here, in the rooms next door. I never thought…" Things can change so quickly. Now, it’s her turn to hold out her hand to Sephiroth in offering. "Well, maybe you’d get along with them, too?”
Sephiroth stares at her open hand like he's never seen anything like it before, almost like the way he used to stare at her paintings. Then, his face changes, hardens. His mouth presses into a thin line and his eyes shift back to hers, the wonder in them dead. Her hand hangs lonely in the air.
“… Aerith," he says quietly, "you’re still dreaming.”
She lowers her hand, and the space between them is just space. They both look away. The bloody sword draws her eye.
“It won’t be like this again, will it?”
“... No. But don’t worry," he tells her, and turns to leave. "I’ll be there when you wake up.”
Then, this is their last chance. They should at least say goodbye.
He stops abruptly when Aerith catches his wrist again with both her hands. The space between them closes in an instant. He seems surprised when her arms wind tight around him, her head sinking into his chest. Then, all at once, Sephiroth’s there with her, fully there, and she knows him by the way his fingers curl against the small of her back.
“I’ll see you then, Sephiroth.” Another promise for him to hold on to.
They break away slowly, hovering close. The corner of his mouth twitches, like he might return her winsome smile. Instead, he closes his eyes, lowers his forehead until it’s against hers, and breathes out. At the touch of his hand coming to rest gentle against her cheek, her eyes slip shut as well. For just a moment longer, the dream holds.
And then he's gone, without another word, through the solid door like a ghost. Echoing from the hallway, she hears the door of the room next to hers chime and slide open. Cloud will let her out, once Sephiroth is too far gone for her to try and follow. Until then, she's alone again.
The mural is there waiting for her when she spins on her heel and walks over to the bed. Briefly, she lets her fingers skate over the flowers on the wall, yellow and violet. After so many years, some of them crumble under her gentle touch. The dream, not the nightmare. Together in springtime, not oblivion.
Aerith lays down again to sleep, and hopes.
