A planet in the near-endless cosmos. Vibrant in its green glow of vitality.
But in this vital glow, certain grey wounds exist that spread over the surface like scars. And close to one of such wounds stands a massively erected city of machines.
Not far from it, inside a smaller village in an inn, another change of fate took its course.
----
"I don't remember him being present that day..."
Words can hurt and indulge insecurities that fester and become insurmountable hurdles.
Leon watched her. Tifa was not exactly someone who would lie. At least he believed so and sighed lightly, hearing her words.
Aerith, close by, knit her brows into a worried expression.
"It's not your memory that is at fault. But you also shouldn't blame Cloud for that..." he answered. "Cloud is just...Not himself anymore."
"What do you mean!?" Tifa looked slightly scared by his words now and stared intently at the brown-haired man sitting with them in the community lounge of the tavern.
"I think it's about time I come clean to you two. Cloud and I...know each other. At least we used to...And I mean, before all the things at Midgar happened."
"Huh?" Both girls now exclaimed in surprise.
"But you have to promise me something. Never mention this to him, alright?"
"Why? Shouldn't he know?", Tifa asked.
"As I said, he is currently not exactly himself. And what I'm about to tell you could shock you both. So you have to promise me. No matter what you hear from me, you will never act on my words. That is the only thing I ask."
Both of the women looked at him seriously and glanced at each other. With a firm expression, they nodded at each other and replied to him with the same gesture.
"Alright, where do I start? Maybe I should give my own opinion first. I had my guesses when I saw Cloud acting so distant and as if we never knew each other." He slightly scoffed at his own words when reminiscing about their meeting at the Shinra HQ.
"I remained silent and observed you guys while being unsure about how to process most of what happened. Just imagine how I felt when I saw someone I know barge into Hojo's little lab and wreak havoc there."
"Not that my mood was anything to go by after I saw Aerith being imprisoned..."
"Me?" Aerith was surprised. "You know me?"
"You could say that. After all, I was a Turk once. I know quite a lot about you." He smiled at her, and Aerith flinched a little.
"So you are..." Her question came out slowly, and Tifa noticed her hesitation. That also made Tifa frown and become suspicious of Leon.
"Yes, I was one of the people who surveilled you once. But I was still a freshman back then. Only a few months out of training. Hell, after the Wutai conflict years ago, I was glad not to have to go into that mess. Well, I'm dragging on."
Leon changed his sitting posture and looked around for a moment.
Barret now was getting impatient. "Come to the point already. Is he lying to us or not!?"
Leon looked to the side and observed the hunk of a man. Barret was obviously agitated at the thought of Cloud having lied to them. And that after being through a lot of stuff together.
"He didn't lie." He changed his gaze to Tifa. "He was there, Tifa. Cloud was present on that day. And I was also there."
"What? But I don't remember you..." The woman looked rather suspiciously at him again.
"Remember what I just said. I was a Turk. Of course, my mission was a little bit different from the two SOLDIER that were present that day in Nibelheim..."
He continued and started to explain.
"I was given the mission to find out everything that Hojo was doing in your hometown. As you know by now, there were enough experiments conducted in the mansion and the old Mako reactor. Though not everything was greenlighted by Shinra, and a lot of it was done on that lunatic's own agenda."
"So while Sephiroth talked with the mayor, Cloud took the time and went ahead to relax. I guess that most things are true about his activities there. I and the other SOLDIER went to do our own things."
"The other SOLDIER? There were 3?" Barret asked that now. The story from Cloud's words before was different after all and it confused him.
Leon shook his head. "No...There were only two with us at that time. Sephiroth and..." He looked intently at Aerith. "Zack..."
That got a jolt of surprise from her.
"Who is Zack?" Barret asked now.
But unlike the burly man, Tifa became serious when hearing that familiar name. Now she knew he was not just spouting nonsense.
"And you said Cloud was there too...But.", asked Tifa while frowning her little brows into trying to figure out why she didn't remember him there?
"Cloud never made it into SOLDIER. He..." Leon chuckled a little and smiled softly at Tifa when recalling Cloud's embarrassment.
"...He was too embarrassed about meeting you again. Can't fault him for not wanting you to find out that he only made it to an Infanterist. Not even able to make it to the lowest third-class SOLDIER rank. So he hid himself under that helmet and kept mostly to himself as much as possible."
"Huh! Well, I'll be damned..." Barret seemed rather interested now. He had some gut feeling that the blond brat was always trying too hard to play the overly cool attitude with everyone.
Realization dawned on Tifa as well the moment he mentioned that. "Wait...that one guy who asked about my well-being after we fell from the bridge...Now that I think about it...His voice...That was Cloud!?" There were also a few other moments where it felt weirdly familiar to her.
Leon nodded. "I wasn't there at the time when you went up the mountain, so probably yeah. It's just that Cloud is tangling up his memories with those of his idol."
"You mean Zack?" Aerith asked now, and her expression seemed extremely serious. She easily figured out the tidbits of information after hearing him out. There were still some memories of how her ex-boyfriend talked about a quirky kid after all.
"Yeah, your old boyfriend was Cloud's idol..."
Now, Barret and Tifa were surprised. Only Red13 and Aerith herself seemed to remain calm while listening, though Aerith looked rather sad than calm at that moment
"Zack was the one you were talking about? Your first love, I mean." Tifa asked her out of curiosity now.
"Huh? Yeah....Right, we wanted to talk about this before...But now is not really the time... Please continue!" Aerith said back and wanted to continue listening to Leon's words. A certain curiosity now grips her heart.
Leon sighed lightly. He could tell she was now eagerly trying to get more information about Zack.
"After the first dilemma, where Sephiroth closed himself up in the mansion, everything went haywire. The burning of the village...I only found you guys later in the reactor when I went there together with Zangan."
"Before I could continue and check for the others, the old man took Tifa and left. She had a deep wound, and it needed immediate medical help. I agreed with him, lent them the helicopter we used to get up there, and went on ahead alone."
Tifa seemed to fidget with her hand and softly placed it near her upper abdomen, close to her chest area. Presumably remembering the scar that was still there.
Leon, seeing that, also placed one hand on his neck, where his fingers slowly traced over the scar that traveled along his whole neck.
"Not one of my greatest decisions, I guess. But in retrospect, it was my only choice...I found Zack unconscious on the ground with wounds on him, and he was not alone. There was another of Hojo's experiments about to eat him alive. So, I went ahead and tried my best to defeat the mutant before it did as mentioned. Sadly, that thing was not to be trifled with, and after it mutated further and went out of control, it brought me some heavy injuries while rampaging the place some more."
His rubbing at the neck intensified slightly.
"Got these as a memory of that. Still wonder how I managed to survive that day. Anyway, I still managed to defeat it. Unlucky as it already was, some pressure pipes went off after alarms started blaring in the facility, and I got knocked out by metal hitting me."
With a sigh, he stopped rubbing his neck.
"Later, I regained some consciousness, but it was too late at the time. I guess that the alarm informed Hojo straight away and gave him room to act. With me bleeding profusely near death's door and Zack unconscious, and Cloud somehow having joined us at some point and unconscious as well, we three unlucky souls got captured and turned into subjects. And for the next 4 years, we went under the sadistic experiments of that old bastard....." Leon clenched his palms in anger just remembering.
"So, you were missing only because you never left Nibelheim that day. And those years were stolen from you by Hojo?", Tifa commented after finding this truth out.
Tifa and Aerith seemed to be in thought at that moment. Both of them suddenly felt guilt rise in their minds and hearts, for each of them had blamed their significant other for something out of their control.
"Damn that Hojo. What a damn bastard. The more we find out, the more disgusting that slimebag becomes..." Barret grunted.
Red13 growled. "Agreed, I hope next time we meet that scientist, we manage to end his ways."
Leon nodded. "In a sense, we were also lucky to have had some value in us for his experimentations. The other two, one having already passed the SOLDIER experimentation and the other who somehow seemed to have injured Sephiroth. For that guy, those two were prime examples of rare guinea pigs. I probably only became one because I outperformed a mutant rather well, all things considered, while only being evaluated as a low-tier Turk. Even I think my chances that day were extremely slim to be truthful..."
Then, silence remained for a short moment for everyone to digest the information.
"Well, Zack managed to regain some control over our fate after we got some help from some friends that found out about Hojo's lab and us being there. With that, we finally managed to escape from the mansion - though we were hunted by Shinra for quite some time. Cloud was comatose through pretty much the whole journey, while I was already awake but still needed to heal properly from my wounds. The mako-poisoning didn't make it any better at the time for sure."
He looked at Aerith then and took her hand softly.
"That one day was rainy... And I'm sorry..."
Aerith looked at him and was puzzled. But then a single tear traveled down her cheeks.
"Huh?" She wiped it away. "Why do I?"
"Your knowledge may be gone, but your emotions remain...And you probably already felt that Zack had returned to the planet..." He let go of her hands.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't protect Zack. I wanted to help. He was a good friend. In the end, he even sacrificed himself for us two. That battle that day went on for a long time, and I only ended up being incapacitated again... saved by Zack once again only to lie exhausted and beaten to be unablke to do anything..."
Leon gritted his teeth, remembering that moment. A moment where he could have saved a friend and changed everything. Just a little bit longer, and they could have survived together.
"Cloud, on the other hand woke up a while after the fight ended. I asked him to quickly check on Zack. But after asking him, I only heard Cloud's wailing cry and his sobbing later." He placed one his hands on his face.
"The exhaustion overcame me, and I lost consciousness there. The next thing I remember is being in the Shinra HQ...in Hojo's hands again...So at least that is as much as I can tell you about what happened. My guess is Cloud managed to escape more incoming Shinra troops. And Zack...since I feel his spirit in the lifestream, he probably didn't make it that day...That and the Bustersword being in Cloud's possession now, tells me the truth..."
The others at the side seemed to feel sorry for Aerith. Now that more details came to light, the sorrow came to overflow in their moods.
"Wait, you can feel him?" Aerith was sad but still asked that question.
"Yeah...Another thing that I hid most of my life. I'm a Cetra as well. Well, I'm only a halfling like you Aerith, but a Cetra nonetheless. However, if we consider everything seriously, everyone on this planet has some Cetra DNA in them, one way or another. It just got weaker and weaker over time and diluted itself into near extinction."
Aerith looked surprised when she found out that she was not the last. And not only her, but the others as well.
"You can imagine how I tried to keep this hidden. And at first, I managed to hide that fact rather easily. Especially since most male Cetra are unlikely to develop the same spiritual strength and abilities as females of our race do. But after being experimented on and having been infused with so much Mako. Even my body started to adapt and showcase my heritage."
"You are the one Hojo wanted me to...."
Leon smiled wryly. "Yeah...the reproduction plan. He found out. I imagined him to dissect me the next moment that fact came to light. Hell, that asshole could also simply extract my body fluids and inject them into you if need be. Yet he wanted to make it as "normal" as possible. In my opinion, that bastard wanted to torment us more than necessary."
Red13, Tifa, and Aerith frowned. The only one that was out of the loop here was Barret, but from the words he heard, he could also make the assumptions that got him into the same state as the three.
"Well, it could also be because of the parasitic DNA that is now coursing through my body. And since we are on this topic. Tifa, listen well. Cloud and I got some of Jenova's cells injected into us. In Cloud's case, it is his left arm. In mine, it is my heart. Every SOLDIER candidate has this DNA in them. Especially after the G-Projekt went through their experiments with fetuses and finally became able to mass-produce SOLDIER in handpicked individuals."
He clenched his fist and concentrated some mana through it. The lifeforce inside his body seemed to pulse into action, and a small aura enveloped his hand.
"It changes us permanently to harvest mako and strengthen our bodies. Yet at the same time, we start seeing things, hearing things...the foreign cells are slowly corroding us. And in Cloud's case, the mako poisoning scrambled his memories. I guess that he lost most of them after some relapse. It's a wonder that you two even met. Come to think of it, how did you even meet?"
Tifa squinted her eyes. "It's true...I found Cloud rather out of it near Sector 7's train station...But, it is curable, right!?" She asked right after with a worried look.
"I don't know...At the very least, it does induce some heavy hallucinations in us, but those should get less problematic as long as we keep him in the present. With you around, I think it should be fine." Leon grinned at Tifa now, and that surprised her somewhat. She sure enough got the hinted message.
"Well, we all can contribute to improving his mental state. Just keep a note to be wary of him if he relapses too hard. I saw Cloud getting attacked mentally every time some key memories seemed to surface. Like names or memories that could contradict the built persona that he currently wears... But the good thing is that he seems to start recalling some of his own memories. Not sure, though, if it is a good thing that he is rather easily influenced when in those states of weakness. Maybe someone could use those states of weakness and manipulate him. So be mindful of what he seems to see."
"Sephiroth..." Aerith said with a frown. And the others also felt that this was actually the answer.
"Probably." Leon nodded to that. Obviously, with his meta knowledge, he kept it the way as he would know it. "And about the cells...There is no turning back. At least not that I know of. However, I started to get the hang of the cells, and my symptoms started to weaken and disappear. If we could get a trustworthy scientist to look at my cells, we could probably make a vaccine. But fingers crossed on that assumption."
"It's better than nothing. We saw what could happen with those guys in black robes..." Red13 commented on this now.
Tifa and Aerith looked rather downcast. Just at that moment, someone walked over to them.
It was Cloud who was gone for a while, checking out the town and getting some supplies for breakfast in the morning.
"Oh, hey buddy. Got everything we needed?" Leon smiled and went straight to acting as if nothing had happened.
But Cloud obviously could see Aerith avoiding his gaze and Tifa looking at him worriedly.
"Did something happen?" He asked before nodding at Leon and putting down the basket with all the ingredients, and looking at Aerith.
"Oh, nothing. Everything is fine. I'm just a little tired, that's all." Aerith said meekly when noticing he meant her.
"Then you should get some rest.", Cloud replied nonchalantly.
"Cloud, can we talk for a moment?" Tifa asked now and stood up.
"Tifa?" Leon frowned. Didn't he ask her to keep quiet? Well, maybe it was a bad decision to tell them some truths.
"It's fine, I just want to figure something out myself. Cloud, please meet me at the balcony." Then she went upstairs.
Cloud was confused but still followed her up.
Leon sighed and followed their departure with his gaze. "Well, whatever happens, just try not to kick in the doors. Obviously, Cloud is struggling with his mako-induced amnesia. Just know that we will still have to stop Sephiroth at the end." He also stood up then.
Before leaving, though, he still said a few words to Aerith. "If you need to talk...I'm here." Placing his hand on her shoulder, he went ahead to get some sleep.
Barret could only scratch his head in frustration and also went up.
Red13 just came closer to Aerith and lay down. He remained close by for the time she remained on her chair in a somewhat praying position now.
Her expression looked extremely pained and sad.