Chapter ThirtyTwo


Tifa turned to look up at Kit in surprise at the sound of her voice. "Kit?" she asked incredulously. "When did you get here? Where were you? We thought we'd lost you too!" Her dark eyes were filled with tears, Kit realized as she forced herself to look away from Cloud's blank stare. Abruptly his head dropped, and the faint echoes of Jenova's power seemed to fade away.
"I've been here for over two weeks," she answered, shivering. "It's a long story, Jenova sort of..." Aware of the doctor standing in the doorway, she stopped. "Tifa, what happened? What's going on? Why does Cloud feel..."
"So you know the young man too?" Dr. Richards asked, raising his eyebrows curiously. "What a strange coincidence... Would you prefer I left you three alone?"
"Yes, I'm sorry," Kit replied, staring at Cloud and Tifa. "We have a lot to catch up on."
Once the doctor had left, Kit sat down on the foot of one of the hospital beds. "Of all the ways to meet again..."
"Yeah," Tifa said, her head in her hands. "What happened to you at the Temple of the Ancients? What about Jenova?"
"She... possessed me," Kit said, "for lack of a better word. She tried to make me join her at the Promised Land, wherever that might be, but somehow I took control back from her, and... well, I found myself here. But I'm fine now. Tifa, what happened with Cloud? How did he end up down here in this state?"
"Oh, Kit..." Tifa said wearily. "There was this huge crater in the north where something had injured the planet... Lifestream gushing up like a geyser, a hundred feet into the air..."
"Jenova and Sephiroth hinted at a place like that," Kit mused. "That's what the Ancients called the Promised Land? Is that why Aeris isn't here too?"
Tifa's head dropped into her hands again, and her shoulders began to shake. "Was it?" Kit asked, confused. "What's wrong?"
After a long pause, Tifa looked up at Kit again, her eyes overflowing. "Kit, Aeris is dead."
Kit felt her heart skip a beat. "What?" she said faintly.
"After the Temple of the Ancients," Tifa murmured, "Aeris disappeared. Somehow, Cloud knew where she'd gone, to this ancient city where the Cetra had lived. We followed her there, and found her in the middle of the night, kneeling on this... altar of some kind. Cloud told us to stay back, and he went up to her, but before he could say anything..."
Her voice trailed off painfully. "Sephiroth had gotten there first."
"Sephiroth?" Kit whispered in disbelief.
"Oh, Kit - he fell down on her like a bird of prey, and put his blade through her back before any of us could make a move to stop him!"
"No..." Kit closed her eyes, thinking of Aeris's laugh, of her dancing green eyes and her persistant friendliness. She wanted to deny that her lover could have done such a thing, and yet...
She is an Ancient, and can speak to the planet, though she never knew her true potential. When Sephiroth had told her that, only days ago, Kit hadn't noticed that he'd used the past tense.
"Yes, Sephiroth!" Tifa wept. "And after that, he lured Cloud through the snowfields to the crater - of course the rest of us followed him - and along the way we kept seeing people in black capes, like the ones we saw at Nibelheim... We found out they were clones of Sephiroth, and.... then Sephiroth appeared again..."
Despite the powers of the ring on her finger, Kit felt sick. "And...?"
"He started talking to Cloud," Tifa continued, sobbing. "He told us that Cloud was a clone like they were, except Hojo hadn't finished him, after the things that happened at Nibelheim five years ago. He told Cloud he was a failed experiment, that took his form and personality from my memories, he said he wasn't even Cloud at all!"
"That can't be true," Kit said in astonishment. "Weren't you and Cloud both in Nibelheim when that happened? Didn't you both remember the same things?"
Tifa sniffled miserably. "That's what I was going to tell you, that night at the Gold Saucer... It was a boy named Zack that came with Sephiroth, Cloud wasn't in Nibelheim then."
Cloud lifted his head a little at her words. "Nib...bel..." he mumbled faintly before he slumped over again.
"Cloud?" Tifa turned her attention to him immediately, still crying. "Cloud, can you hear me? Did you hear what I just said? Kit's here, Cloud. She's okay. Please, Cloud, talk to us... Cloud?"
Kit put her aching head in her hands. Looking Cloud over again, she could see no outward resemblance of Sephiroth. But a moment ago, she'd felt Jenova's voice speaking from him, and there was that feeling of familiarity in him, just as she'd felt in Nibelheim around all those strange little figures in the black cloaks. "Then... this isn't Cloud?"
"I don't know," Tifa murmured. "Maybe he is. Sephiroth could have been lying."
Kit couldn't say it. She couldn't tell Tifa that she could tell, he hadn't lied. "So Hojo's the only one who would know."
"Hojo..." Tifa shook her head. "I don't care about Hojo. He's just a washed-up scientist. This isn't his fault... it's Sephiroth's."
"Hojo had a hand in Sephiroth," Kit reminded her, and Tifa turned on her angrily.
"Who cares about Hojo? Whatever he did, it's done, and he'll die like the rest of us when Meteor falls! It was Sephiroth that killed my papa, and burned my hometown. It was Sephiroth who killed Aeris! It was your boyfriend who did this to Cloud!"
Kit flinched. After the last exchange she'd had with Sephiroth, Kit wasn't sure she could claim him as that anymore, but certainly Tifa wasn't likely to be sympathetic about it. She had to understand, though, that she wasn't on his side. "Tifa... he said-"
"Don't you dare try to shift the blame," Tifa interrupted, brushing angry tears from her eyes. "It's all his fault! How can you justify trying to defend someone who could do all these things? How can you have any sympathy for him, when he's trying to destroy the planet, and everything on it?"
"I wasn't going to-"
This time, Kit was interrupted by a knock on the door. Dr. Richards poked his head inside. "I'm sorry, but Kit, the ferry's about to take off. If you want to be on it, you'd better get out there in a hurry."
Kit thought of telling him she'd changed her mind. Tifa and Cloud were here, and the doctor had said earlier that Tifa had arrived by airship. If AVALANCHE had an airship, they'd come back to see Cloud and Tifa, certainly, and that would be preferable to travelling on her own.
But as she was about to speak, she looked in Tifa's eyes and saw the resentment there. Would any of the others be able to accept her, knowing of her feelings? Probably only one person could be understanding enough to forgive her... but Aeris was dead, she remembered, getting a lump in her throat. "I'll be right out," she said finally, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She was on her own now, for good.
To Chapter ThirtyThree.
To the intro.
© 1998, 1999 by Andrea Hartmann.
That means it's mine, not yours!