Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction / Starcraft Fan Fiction / Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Tassadar's Legacy: The Crusades: Sylvanis ❯ To dream or not to dream... Revelations That Come At a Price ( Chapter 10 )

I woke up with a start. The first thing I noticed, that I'm not in a place I recognize. Second thing I notice, is that it's still dark out, but I feel wide awake. Great. The third thing that I wanted to know, is what the heck woke me up? A creaking noise from the rafters above me answered that question. Silently, I stole out of bed and made my way up the ramp and onto the loft of wherever I am. I came upon an open door and spotted two people covered in a sheet… on top of each other and although it was soft, I could definitely hear their voices and tell who they were. Pressing myself against the wall and taking a deep breath, I tried to will the flush out of my face and my heart to calm down. Just how long had they been at it anyway? I suppose they're making up for lost time.

I went back down the ramp and through a door I noticed. I had figured, heck, I'm wide awake so I may as well look around. Cloud and Tifa are nearby so I don't have to worry too much. I found myself back in the main chapel of Aerith's church. At least I know where I am now. I noted with interest how the hall seemed to glow with the light from the moon. It was really beautiful. I looked up to stare at the moon and two things hit me at once. One, there's no hole in the ceiling. There's no opening for moonlight to show though. So what in the world is glowing? Two, the pool is glowing. Weird, but I suppose since it's directly over a vein of mako that makes a bit of sense.

Walking over to the edge of the water, I peered down at it. The water is quite beautiful, till I noticed my reflection. I definitely decided I must be dreaming, cause this has to be a nightmare. I froze up, and slowly turned around, but no one was there. Turning to look back at my reflection, there was no change. Sephiroth himself is peering over my shoulder looking right at my face from the reflection. Experimentally, I put my hand out in the direction he would be if he were real, but I felt nothing but air, and my hand seemed to go right through him. An illusion for sure then, but in a pool of mako water?

“What do you want?” I asked. “The question is what you want.” said a little girl's voice. I looked up to spot the little girl who'd grabbed onto my sleeve earlier today. Roxie was it? Or something like that. I asked, “What do you mean?” Now clearly convinced this is a dream, cause a little girl is suddenly speaking English like a first language. The little girl was standing across the other side of the pool from me and was regarding me with a curious and slightly disturbing smile on her face. I shuddered. Dream or no, this is going to give me a few nightmares for time to come. In answer to my question, the little girl responded, “You don't belong here. Why are you here? What do you want?” I shook my head and said, “I don't know why I'm here, but my belonging here isn't in question. Tifa's my Mom and Cloud is my Dad. Even if it is through word only… I love them as if they are my Mom and Dad.”

The little girl looked surprised. Seeing I now have a slight upper hand considering I'd been highly freaked out before, I asked, “Who are you?” The little girl cocked her head to the side, and then almost as if stepping from her body, Aerith walked out and I gasped. Aerith froze and asked, “You know me?” I shook my head and said, “I know of you, and some things you've done in your life. On my planet, this entire world is just a piece of fiction in a game. I know a chunk about nearly everything here. Though there's always more to learn it seems.”

Aerith nodded and said, “You seem honest, and kind. I had noticed you come by looking through the pool. You don't have the life stream in you. What do you want here?” I shook my head and said, “I just want to go home and tell my family I'm going to live here now. There's more here for me than there. Tifa and Cloud and all your friends are my friends now too.”

Aerith nodded and said, “Alright. Enjoy yourself.” Then she disappeared. I shook my head and sat down. Looking back at the water, the image of Sephiroth hadn't left. I regarded him curiously. Tall, handsome, suave. He looks deadly, but not crazy or dangerous. The more I looked at him the more I felt it. This guy isn't evil. Is this the real Sephiroth? No of course not. Hojo cloned Sephiroth a couple times in order to improve his son. I spat the word in my mind. Hojo was despicable. Forgiveness for all, but some people just need not spread their wrong about preferably. So maybe there's a good Sephiroth, but what does that have to do with me? And why is he staring at me and hasn't moved?

Reaching down into the pool, I skimmed the water, causing ripples that caused the image to distort. Once the ripples were gone, the entire surface of the water had changed. Reflected in it is an image of a lit up Aerith's church with plenty of people in it, including everyone from Avalanche. I recognized it as the final scene from Advent Children. I watched as Cloud smiled a tiny smile, uncharacteristic of his open self now. The shot panned to Aerith turning around. I'd seen it all before, but one thing caught my attention. Zack's the one leaning in the doorway, waving to Cloud before he walks away with Aerith. Why then, do I see Zack, but I also see Sephiroth? It's like two images superimposed over each other.

The other thing is this Sephiroth looks happy. What is all this? Is it an illusion? I just saw Aerith, but she didn't comment on the whole Sephiroth thing. The image faded and I again saw myself, but this time no Sephiroth. What was that about? A good Sephiroth? Sephiroth superimposed over Zack? But Zack and Aerith are together! Does that mean… no no no no, that's too crazy to contemplate. Aerith would've hated Sephiroth, what with Jenova behind him and her being the enemy of the planet… who the heck is sending me these images anyway? Sephiroth is dead, as is Jenova. Aerith didn't seem to know I was even being shown those images… Well, what Aerith didn't know, I guess the planet knew. After all, the planet must have a will of it's own as well right? Aerith is only one person inside the Life Stream after all.

 

So, supposing the planet was showing me these images for a reason… it doesn't make sense! “What are you trying to show me?” I asked the water as if it could hear me. It shouldn't have been able to hear me, but it did. Mako pool duh, I hit myself mentally for being stupid as the water's reflection changed again and only showed one thing. No superimposed image nothing, Aerith and Sephiroth are kissing. And just like that the image faded. My mind was reeling. Then I started laughing. “That is so ridiculous! Sephiroth and Aerith… that's crazy!” I shook my head and ended up talking to myself. “Even if they were together, how the heck would they end up together? Them!? Ok think about this logically… Sephiroth as a good guy… when did he meet Aerith?... I suppose they would have met while she was asleep in her cell in Shinra when he unlocked Cloud's door… that's a funny thing. Why did he unlock it? If he needed Cloud, he could've just killed everyone and taken Cloud. Sephiroth skewered a midgar zolom easily when one of those things would've destroyed them in seconds, so… there's really no reason for him to not kill them…”

 

I shook myself, but it was still there. If Sephiroth is good, that's a pretty good chunk of evidence right there that he's not evil. Still talking outloud to myself to help me think, “Ok, so he left them all alive and lead them all on a wild goose chase when he didn't have to. After that, the next time Aerith had a run in with anything about Sephiroth was the giant Midgar Zolom skewered on a pole… no one seemed to like that much…” Something caught my eye, and I looked down as the water's reflection changed again showing said Midgar Zolom, and the group staring at it. I watched stunned, at Aerith, who was staring on, her face expressionless as Nanaki rubbed his head against her arm. Then she said, “I'm glad it's dead.”

 

I shook my head and said, “Ok, that didn't really mean she liked it, but she didn't dislike it either… weird. Next would be… Junon. So they met on the boat going to Costa Del Sol. All of them ended up fighting Jenova because of him, then he vanished… so truthfully, he didn't touch them at all. Jenova did…” I scratched my head, wondering how this was becoming more and more plausible. Next would be… I'm not sure… Gongaga… Golden Saucer… Cosmo Canyon… ah, Nibelheim came next. Ok what happened there… the group confronted Sephiroth in the basement of the Shinra mansion and he said a bunch of cryptic words before nearly impaling cloud through in the stomach with a materia and flew away without hardly harming a hair on anyone's head, other than Cloud, and that was no harm done… and he gave them a ridiculously good materia too. A powerful summon… Odin was it? I don't remember…” I flicked my fingers through the water idly hoping it would show me something again, but it didn't.

 

Shrugging, I said, “Ok, so all in all, there's reasonable evidence to suggest that he had an ulterior motive that would suggest he's not evil, but him and Aerith getting together? Even if that did happen, he killed her in the City of Ancients!” I stared as the water rippled and showed the Avalanche group sleeping in beds in a strange room but nothing more, then waking up and suddenly everyone was morose over Aerith. I felt seriously confused. “What… just happened?... they slept through the night, and then suddenly started saying Aerith died?... but, didn't they get up in the middle of the night and find Aerith down that staircase that hadn't been there before? That was where Sephiroth killed Aerith. But… if they never went down there… they dreamed it? All of them? Highly unlikely, if not impossible… unless they were all induced to have the same dream… and afterwards that staircase was gone again… by that time Aerith was acting really weird… almost like the way Sephiroth would act mysterious whenever he talked to them… so…”

 

I shook my head struggling to wrap my mind around the concept, “So… if Cloud and the others had been hunting Sephiroth, but somehow Aerith and him got together in secret… naturally it'd be a terrible thing for Aerith since she would constantly have to live with that pressure of being in love with him and not able to tell for fear of being disowned by her friends… so finally they devised a way for her to “die” and she ended up leading them on through a plan Sephiroth concocted, which is why she was acting so weird, cause she was doing what he said, and then they put them in a sleep induced dream to make them dream the same dream, and then they could go and live happily together… what a great hypothesis, except for the fact that Sephiroth appeared numerous times afterwards to continue on his plans. Got something to say to that, pool of water?”

 

Funnily enough, the pool answered by showing a Sephiroth holding hands with Aerith, with a number 1 printed on his back, then it changed to an image of Cloud kicking Sephiroth's butt in the final battle, and when he finally fell over, face first, a number seven was printed on his back. Then the image faded away and I sat there, stunned. “Sephiroth's clones…” Of course… why didn't I see it before? Jenova and Hojo were the villains to start with in the first place… if Sephiroth fell in love with Aerith, then Jenova lost control of him, but since Hojo had made plenty of clones of him, that means that Jenova just took control of another… so couldn't there be more clones of Sephiroth out there? Maybe all that Cloud killed during Advent Children was another clone of him, and the Sephiroth he killed back in the crater had already well and truly died. It was an interesting revelation for sure. But what to make of it?

 

I asked the pool, “Why are you showing me all this?” This time the pool didn't answer. I waited, but with no answer forthcoming, I sighed and stood up. So Sephiroth and Aerith might be alive right now, living together somewhere… but wouldn't they have been noticed by now?... though… Cloud and the others had found a few hidden islands… maybe they're living on one? I shook my head and pinched my temples, feeling a severe headache coming on from all the implications and complications that would arise from this. What do I tell the others? Oh by the way Sephiroth is alive and so is Aerith and they're both lovers hidden away on some island somewhere. I snorted. Even if they did believe me, what would they do about it? Sephiroth as a good guy? The idea would be foreign enough to be near impossible to believe. I almost didn't believe it, even if I always have harbored a deep respect for the man. His pain was not dissimilar from my own. He just wanted answers about his parents, but his answers had driven him to insanity, but before that, he was a good man. A hero to the people.

 

I laid down in bed and tried to ignore the creaks of the rafters. I couldn't believe they were still at it. How long had I been at that pool? I yawned and felt tired again. Thank goodness. I'd rather not be nocturnal. That would be problematic. Then the thought brushed past my mind, He went crazy after he met Jenova… perhaps she sensed his confusion, and knowing he already had her cells, she used the chance he offered to get free and twist him to be his slave. Cloud was never the puppet. Not as much as Sephiroth… Suddenly the line Kadaj had used on Cloud when they had their last confrontation made sense. He had called himself a puppet as well, even if he were a remnant of Sephiroth. Things are starting to make way too much sense with this crazy idea. Even if it was spurred on by ethereal images of Aerith, Sephiroth, and a pool that acted too much like it was an all knowing glorified television set.

 

Maybe I'm just dreaming. Still I knew dream or not, things were different now. I couldn't rest if there was a possibility that there was truth to it. And if so… Aerith must miss her friends… with that last thought, I finally drifted off to sleep.