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Chapter ThirtyFour
The long walk to Cosmo Canyon gave Kit plenty of time to reflect on what had happened in the recent days. It was a pity she didn't want to reflect on them at all anymore. Her life, piece by piece, was falling apart. Or perhaps she should have said lives - any ties to the life she'd lived as SOLDIER First Class had vanished into smoke when Mara had died. Her ties to her friends in AVALANCHE had been severed when she had looked into Tifa's eyes and seen the bitter resentment there. The life she'd planned to live with Sephiroth had never even begun before it was turned to ashes. And then, of course, there was the small matter of looking the apocalypse in the face every time she turned her eyes to the sky. All lives were coming to an end, not just hers.
She wondered why then was this so important to her, as she approached the table across from Elder Bugah. He looked up from his drink suspiciously for a moment, then he smiled sadly at her. "Shouldn't you have gone home to your family? Everyone else here in Cosmo Canyon left, except those of us who have nowhere else to go."
"I guess I could count myself among that crowd," she said, accepting his nodded invitation to sit down across from him. "That's why I'm here, actually..."
"I thought you might be back."
"Why would you think that?" she asked, startled.
He chuckled. "I may be getting on in years, but that means I'm old enough to recognize the looks in people's eyes. When you were here a few weeks ago, what I saw in your eyes was barely restrained curiosity...almost desperation."
"So I was that transparent?"
"No, I'm just that good."
Kit smirked a little, in spite of herself. "Then you know why I'm here," she said, growing serious, "and what I want to know."
"Sure do, but there's not a lot I can tell you, sadly. I was never entirely sure what happened even back then, and now it's been years."
The disappointment must have shown on her face, because Bugah suddenly leaned forward, touching her hand comfortingly. "Now, what is it, was that doctor your long-lost mother, perhaps? There's nothing anyone can do for her now, at any rate."
"No... it's not quite like that," Kit admitted.
Bugah sighed. "There are too many things wrong with the world right now. Listen, I'll buy you a drink, and I'll tell you what I do remember. What would you like?"
Kit shook her head. "I shouldn't, but thanks anyway."
Bugah shrugged. "Too many troubles hanging over everyone's heads these days - quite literally. You might as well drink up and forget about them for awhile, worrying can't make Meteor go away."
Kit smiled faintly. "It's not that. I'm pregnant."
"Oh..." Bugah peered at her curiously. "Maybe I'm not as good as I thought, then," he commented. Kit smiled - she'd apparently known Bugah years ago, and somewhere deep inside, she remembered enough to feel at ease with him. "Should have seen right away. Well, at any rate, congratulations... and about the young lady who looked so much like you..."
He took another swallow from his bottle, deep in thought. "Must have been close to twenty years ago now. The girl arrived in the middle of the night, pretty much out of nowhere. Wherever she'd come from, she'd come on foot, and pretty fast, too, from the look of her. As soon as she got within the gates, she started sobbing in relief, and collapsed. She was quite a mess. We got her set up in a room by herself at the inn, and she slept for two days before she was able to answer our questions. Now, Cosmo Canyon's rules were never terribly strict about who was or wasn't allowed to enter, until after this happened. So don't get me wrong, at this point we were just curious. Even so, she wouldn't tell us much... just that Shinra was after her. The most we could coax out of her was that she'd discovered something that someone high up didn't want anyone to know about."
"She didn't say what?"
"No, but we figured it had something to do with her work. Although for the life of me, I don't know what a psychologist would have figured out that Shinra would care that deeply about."
"She was a psychologist?" Kit asked, intrigued. After all the little things that had popped into her mind of late, she wasn't exactly surprised. "She told you that?"
Bugah nodded. "She stayed for quite some time, actually, and we got to know her a bit better. The world was at peace then, Shinra hadn't taken over everywhere - in fact, people respected Shinra, Inc. That's why we were so surprised by what she was saying. For awhile, we thought she must be lying, or delusional."
"But you changed your mind."
"Not until it was too late," Bugah admitted with a sigh. "Kitarin had been here a few months-" He stopped speaking when Kit gasped. "You know the name?"
"It... sounds familiar," Kit managed to say. "That was her name? Kitarin?"
"Yes, that was it," Bugah affirmed, and Kit could hardly suppress a grim smile. So at least her name was authentic.
"She'd been with us a few months," Bugah continued, "and then Shinra troops marched on in one day. Told us to hand her over, or else. Cosmo Canyon's been a place of peace ever since the Gi tribe fell, and that had already been twenty years. We had no weapons, our Nanaki was still a small child, and the Shinra all had their swords and guns. There wasn't anything we could do to stop them from taking her..."
He sighed and took another drink. "I'm not proud of what happened. As soon as Kitarin saw them coming, she ran and hid up in the caves. The rest of us thought we could buy her some time to escape somehow, or throw them off the track, but there was this one fellow in charge of the troops. He was no soldier, just a scrawny little fellow with glasses, but he was absolutely vicious. And bent on revenge, from the way he carried on about finding Kitarin. He ordered the troops to spread out and search for her, and whoever got in their way was fair game. A couple of the guys still tried to play hero, even though they were unarmed, and got a belly full of lead for their trouble. After that, Kitarin came out on her own, saying that she'd submit to his wishes after all, because she knew the truth, and that it would eventually come out whether she lived or died."
"The truth about what?" Kit interrupted.
Bugah regarded her with amusement. "Why don't you tell me, Kitarin?"
She stared at her hands on the table, unsure of how to respond. "Oh, come now," Bugah admonished her gently. "I may be old, and I may drink too much, but I'm no fool. Talking to you now, getting a good look at you, it's obvious. I couldn't say I know how you manage to look exactly the same after twenty years, but I'm sure Shinra's got plenty of tricks I couldn't explain. I assume you made some kind of a deal with them, is that right?"
"I... don't think so."
"You don't 'think' so?" He raised an eyebrow curiously.
"I don't remember any of this," she admitted with a sigh. "All I know is that I've always hated Professor Hojo, but I didn't know why exactly. I'd be surprised if he wasn't the man you saw ordering Shinra's troops around back then. But I still don't know what set him off, why he was so intent on me. I came here hoping..." She shook her head slowly, biting back her frustration. "I hoped I'd find some clue."
"I suppose asking this Hojo himself would be out of the question?"
She couldn't quite suppress a grin of grim satisfaction. "Quite. He's dead."
"Hmph." Bugah chuckled. "The look on your face says you had something to do with it. We at Cosmo Canyon don't condone violence by any means, but from-"
"He was a liar, a kidnapper, and a murderer," Kit told him flatly, "and he's done things so terrible there aren't even names for them, let alone laws against them."
Bugah nodded. "I was going to say, from what I saw of him back then, the gleeful look on his face as he ordered his troops to kill and the gleam in his eye when he took Kitarin away to who knows where, I'm sure he deserved it."
"He did," Kit confirmed. "Probably more than even I know." She hesitated, thinking of all the lives she knew Hojo had ruined. Sephiroth, Mara, Vincent, Cloud... all those lives had been irreparably changed by Hojo, and those were only the ones she knew of. And herself of course, whoever she really was. "Kitarin..." Her real name. It brought a faint smile to her lips. "Elder Bugah, if you wouldn't mind, could you tell me about the Kitarin you knew twenty years ago? What was she like?"
"Oh, let me think now..." Bugah leaned back in his chair, deep in thought as he emptied his mug. "She was always rather jumpy, and I always felt she was keeping a lot of her true self hidden away - and that makes sense, considering how she ended up here. Pretty emotional too. She always seemed very vulnerable, but that might have been something to do with whatever had happened to her, too. In fact, I'd swear that it was, because one moment she'd be a deer in headlights, the next she'd be tough as a wild chocobo. When it mattered, her spirit showed through in her determination. She helped us out a great deal here in return for the shelter and food we gave her, and followed instructions precisely. She couldn't stand people suffering when she could do something about it, and I suppose that's why she ended up turning herself over to Hojo."
Kit listened dejectedly to the description of the woman she had once been. "Yeah... probably." Did that woman even exist anymore, or was she dead once and for all, now that those who knew her more than casually were nowhere to be found?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a slight tremor that suddenly shook the earth. She stood up nervously as the glasses behind the bar began to clink together, and a great rumble came from outside. However, it seemed to stop as quickly as it had started. "What's that?" she asked Bugah.
He chuckled, pulling his empty mug back towards him - it had vibrated across the table to where she'd been sitting. "Sounds like your friends are back."
"Friends?" Her eyes widened. He couldn't mean Shinra...
"Yes, the ones who came with you before and brought back Nanaki," Bugah said with a nod. "I suppose you got separated before they hijacked the airship."
"Hijacked the..." Kit went to the door and looked outside to see a huge, familiar shape hovering low above the ground in the distance. "The Highwind!" When Dr. Richards had mentioned an airship, she'd assumed he'd meant a plane like the Tiny Bronco, or at the most, something like Shinra's Gelnika. "Leave it to Cid to steal his own ship," she smirked.
Bugah joined her at the door, watching the ship land. "I bet they'll be glad to see you again, hmm?"
"I... uh..." Kit wouldn't have taken that bet. Not anymore.
Bugah picked up on her discomfort. "Something happen between you?"
"Not exactly between us," she muttered. "Thanks for what you've told me, but maybe I better leave before they can see me."
"What? They're your friends, aren't they?"
"I don't know," Kit admitted. "I'm not the person they thought I was."
"What kind of fool excuse is that?" Bugah chided her. "We're all who we are. Even you, Kitarin. The Kitarin I knew so long ago, she knew when it was time to run and when it was time to face her problems. Have you changed so much?"
"Elder Bugah..." Kit glanced back at the Highwind nervously. She could see dark shapes against the red rock, as the members of AVALANCHE disembarked, heading for the gates of Cosmo Canyon. "AVALANCHE and I used to be on opposite sides, but I pretended to be on their side. Soon I discovered I really was on their side after all, and that's when they found out I was on the other side." She squinted into the bright sun, trying to indentify the approaching people, and her stomach sank when she realized she'd been looking for a pink dress.
"And now which side are you on?" Bugah prompted her.
Kit sighed wearily. "I don't know. I'm not against them anymore, certainly... but I don't think I'm on anyone's side except my own." She glanced back towards the approaching members of AVALANCHE. "I guess I'd be doing them a disservice if I didn't at least explain what I know, though."
"True enough - with the world in such a state as it is, where every minute might be our last, the only side we can be on is our own," replied Bugah. "No one can fault you for that. Your friends are probably the same way."
"No, they're on the planet's side," she answered automatically. "They're better people than most."
"So much better that they wouldn't understand?" Bugah inquired.
Kit smiled at him sheepishly. "Good point," she admitted. All the excuses she'd been dreaming up to stay away from them didn't really change a thing, now that she thought about it. She didn't even know what they were doing now, after Meteor had been summoned, and at the same time that she shrank from the thought of having to tell them what had happened, she held out the tiniest bit of hope that they might know what to do better than she did.
"I thought so. Now why don't you sit down and wait for them?" Bugah suggested, then he shrugged. "Oh, too late."
"Huh?" A shadow fell across the room, and Kit whirled around just in time to see Cid, Red, and Barret in the doorway, staring at her in surprise, and more than a little suspicion.
To Chapter ThirtyFive. To the intro. That means it's mine, not yours! |
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