someone i loved returned to the lifestream. (greatgospels) wrote in missions, @ 2012-11-18 23:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, aerith gainsborough |
WHO: Aerith Gainsborough
WHAT: This is the last time she will summon.
WHEN: Today.
WHERE: :(
WARNINGS: FEELS!!!!!!
She hears their voices, the hush of silence and then the bits of conversation as they pick up out of shock: she’s gone oh my Hyne she’s gone and I can’t believe it, I can’t and I promised I would protect her, softly more so, That bastard and I’ll kill him. Then the soft sobbing. Aerith wonders who is crying; she longs to pull them into her arms, cradle them, reassure them. There’s a disconnect from this single moment and the one previous, and Aerith’s mind tries desperately to find the bridge. Time has fallen off its course. She only hears these snippets of conversation, reality seems so awfully out of touch, and she thinks of crying too, sharing in the unknowable despair, but she can’t muster tears at the moment, only thinks of how terribly sad the weeping sounds in the echoes of the Centra orphanage. She cried all the time back then too, when they were treated like chattel back in the Icicle Inn. There were more of them than one might originally imagine – little children experiments, dressed in dirty shirt-dresses. Her mother used to soothe her with songs when she cried, would try to tell her that the voices were familiar, not frightening. Aerith remembers only the clean, distinct smell of metal and laboratory equipment, sanitized, and the scythe-curve of his smile when he brushed his hand against her face. Almost lovingly. Ancient, he used to say, my little Cetra, but the words used to make her want to vomit and run away, shaking. Had he thought he possessed her? That she was owned by him? The way his hand drifted over her hair when she darted past him in the hallways, cupping her cheek in experiments so that he looked into her eyes – “How terribly like your mother’s,” he used to murmur, but Aerith did not think it was terrible at all – and fear lodged itself tightly in her throat. Sometimes he showed kindness, giving her candy (the first chocolate she ever tasted came from Hojo’s palm), but those were on the bad days when she would wake up days later, only with the murky memory of her mother crying and throwing herself at the plexiglass that separated them. It was like living in water. She had always been afraid of lakes. How terribly funny how it has come full-circle, she thinks – she can feel her fear pressing her forward as she bends over herself, her eyes wide with surprise. It sticks hot and sweet in her gut, fluttering – like love, she thinks, like anger, it courses into her and spreads out, like dropping a stone into a pond. The Planet has been her oldest friend, Gaia cradling Aerith in her bosom the way that Ifalna never could the day she died in Alexandria. The voices have long since become comforts, no longer terrors in the night, no longer distractions, and she tries to train her ear to them, carefully attuned to the message of the Planet. Ancient, they say, Cetra, they say. For here she is at this makeshift altar, and she doesn’t even know what she is praying for any longer, only that the Planet demands it. Her hands are clasped together: she tries to remember something of what she knows is Yevon, but religion has always been an abstract thing for the girl who grows flowers in the church. Elmyra brought her once. She had plaited Aerith’s hair and wound the braid around her crown, dressed her in the finest clothes they had – which wasn’t much, but Aerith felt very much a lady at twelve and white gloves up to her elbows, eyes bright with excitement. The sanctity of the building had impressed her, a chapel in Sector Three that pulled the rats and the filth out of the slums, cast them anew in its healing light. Aerith knew none of the songs, knew nothing then of Yevon besides his name and his grace, but hope and faith were things she knew well, and so she came again and again. She never knew if she believed in Yevon – she had never heard his voice, after all – but she believed in the idea, and that was always more than enough. Elmyra had been so proud of her then. Aerith wonders, will she be proud of me now? Warmth gathers in her chest, and she feels the familiar course of magic in her blood that comes when she summons but the pull is heavier, like something immense is crawling out of the place where Aeons reside, as if she must drag it out by hand and push all her weight against it to bring it up. She is still praying as she falls, still praying when she feels her consciousness flicker and a tempest gathering under her hands, a maelstrom for the Planet and it’s dying, isn’t it? There is a deep-seated rage that upends itself as she grips her summon by mental fist, carving it out of dream and into reality. This was her first summon, borne unto her from her mother and from the Cetra, and the first time she will ever summon it; this was what she was born to do; this is what she must do to preserve the Promised Land. But this is also the last, isn’t it? This is the last time she will summon. I’m dying, she realizes. The pain sears through her, living fire thrust through her middle. When he pulls the sword away, she automatically falls on her knees, eyes bright with surprise as the pain courses up her spine and up to her brain, synapses firing in a rush of activity to digest it – it can’t, there’s no way, and she feels a thousand things at once while attempting to scramble for the right way to breath again. Despite herself, her chest heaves ragged, her fingers scrambling at stone as if she might unhinge the earth and crawl inside it for safekeeping. Something drips onto the floor. There is something coming out of her mouth and it tastes acidic and coppery and the mineral hint of something else; she spits it out, and it’s both bile and blood, coating her chin red. That wouldn’t look nice; her arms are shaking but she lifts one up to wipe her mouth, in shock, the rest of her frozen to the spot because her stomach has been speared. Sweet metal flame, yes, dragging itself on the ground and the grit drags on her ears, but everything is fading – fading – fading. Shadows coat her sight. Her vision blinks hazy. She presses trembling fingers to the wound and lifts them to see the blood on the tips, and she sobs in her mind, not managing the last moments of life to do just that because she’s so possessed with fear of the end. She doesn’t want to die, hadn’t planned on dying, and she clings to the scraps of life like ribbons, trying to tug them back into her, but they’re slipping out of her grasp, and it’s all going so very fast, and she’s becoming so very cold. In truth, it is not so very bad, though the pain burns and eclipses the entire experience of it so much that she can’t take a single second to appreciate her last few moments of mortality. She feels herself physically wilt, her body gone slack, and there is someone holding her by the shoulders, though she cannot make out the face – her vision is no longer what it used to be, with death’s shadow hovering on the edges – and she is grateful for when they lay her down carefully with trembling hands, and she feels the tiny pinpricks of tears on the borders of her consciousness. Thank you, she wants to say, but though her mind reminds sharp, keenly animated, there’s no way for her to move any longer. Her body is now only but a shell, her spirit slipping away into the green of the Lifestream. Cloud, is that you? she wonders: wonders if those soft pinpricks of pain amidst the closing darkness are the salt of his tears. Are you crying for me? Her neck cranes upward when she feels water on her back, and she becomes frightened: no, it’s not over yet, she’s still alive, can’t you see?, but no matter how she tells herself to move, to grab him, to tell him to not let her go, she feels his hold on her loosen. The water rises up to meet her. She’s animated with a keen desire to prove she is not yet gone, not yet a lost cause, but she can no longer move her body, only watches with a dim sinking horror as the surface shimmers and she sinks down, down, down. She exhales on a long breath, eyes bright with the fever of oncoming death, and her last thoughts come in shuddering flickers across her eyelids as they slowly close. Her mother’s green gaze. Flowers in the church. Elmyra’s finest cherry pie. Tifa and her quiet strength, her resilience. Garnet’s laughter and the mirth that colors the corners of her mouth even when it dies down. Venka’s most earnest expression, the curl of his thin boy-man body nested against hers, his eyes speaking ‘mother.’ Cloud’s rare smile, his mouth on hers, the feel of Costa del Sol sand between their toes, skin bathed wine-red in the sunset light. Ramza’s rough and hesitant affection, the caress of his calloused hands on her face, the brush of him against the corner of her mouth, the indelible, indescribable feeling of beginning. And then she thinks of Zack and his sky-eyes, Zack and his warrior hands, Zack and his laughter and his jokes and his presence, his warmth, his constancy, his dedication. His life. His death. Zack and Aerith and everything-in-between: her heart grows so full with love, it nearly collapses on itself. There is a hand, she can see it then in the dim light, and she thinks Is that you? Reaching for me? and I am so sorry to leave you alone. She reaches for the hand and pulls it towards her with the last ounce of her strength, not knowing where it will take her, but trusting that it will be a place where she needs to go. Her breath ends. Her eyes close. “How long have you been waiting?” she asks when she gets there, hand curled tightly in his, and she nearly weeps at the familiarity and strangeness of the gesture – had she almost forgotten him? She takes a step towards him to place her hand on his face, brushes over the ridge of his scar, and goes on her tiptoes to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. When she opens her eyes, his are still closed, and she smiles easily for the first time in a long while. He smiles too, still boyish even after all this time – has it been very long? not so very for her, but for him, maybe years, centuries, since she does not know how time passes in the lifestream – and pulls her against him into him, nuzzles his head into her hair. It immediately hits her how much she has missed him until this point, and she digs her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, digs her nails into his shoulders, and cries. He brushes her tears away with the pad of his thumb, smile never faltering. “Forever,” he finally says, “I almost thought you would never come.” |