I know I must have irked a few of you with the sudden mention of Tifa in the summary, but I promise you it isn’t a big part of the story and though it is important in terms of the completion of the story, it is mostly one-sided. Poor Tifa. More on that later. I’m deeply sorry for the lack of updating for months, but real life intervened. I’ve had a busy last few months. For one, I acquired a highly stressful, but highly rewarding job as a caretaker for aging adults with developmental disabilities, school has become twenty times more stressful, and I’ve experienced some death in the family. Add to that my desperate attempts to become a runner (completed my first half marathon in May!) and you’ve got a jam-packed schedule. I hope you will all forgive me and continue to follow this story! I promise some more regular updates if I get some more feedback.

Desert Garden

A fanfic. by pixeled

-x-x-x-

No Longer No Longer

What You Ask

Strange Steps

Heels Turned Black

The cinders the cinders

They light the path

Of these strange steps

Take us back take us back

-x-x-x-

Part Eighteen

-x-x-x-

Ownership is a strange thing. All the most important things Zack had in life weren’t really his to begin with, nor were they really things.

It was cold, approaching Autumn, maybe. The stars were brighter than he could ever remember them and between the roiling half-shadows of the translucent silvered clouds Zack could see silver hair.

“Angeal gave you this, didn’t he?”

Zack touched his hand to his jaw where the scar began and traced his fingers over the deep lines. His hair got in the way, whipping furiously around his head, and though he was cold he refused to shift, or merely couldn’t.

This had been a long, arduous journey, and somehow he felt as though he was chasing something as intangible as the silver of the half-formed languid tendrils of the night sky clouds.

He didn’t own this mission. This was someone else’s. Angeal’s. Lazard’s. Cloud’s. And yet it was deeply important to him just the same. He might have joined SOLDIER to be a hero, to fight the battles that many couldn’t fight on their own, but he also joined to find adventure, to see lands he would never have set foot on had he stayed in Gongaga. And now he was being chased by invisible ghosts across the planet. Those he met and fought alongside were dead, irreversible and irrevocably returned to their source, to Lifestream. Try as he might to cast them out, Genesis’s words swirled around him like an orbiting moon. Lifestream . . . the gift of the goddess.

“And what do the stars tell you tonight?” a gravelly voice asked. Zack slowly came out of his trance to focus on the owner of the ship that Lazard had arranged for them. It was headed for the opposite continent, where Banora lay hidden in ruin. The air was bitterly salty and smelled of fish, which was perhaps the first thing that came back to him and grounded him in reality. Next he took in the sight of the fisherman, a former member of the Shinra Guard. He had lost his eye in battle and now wore a patch, though the scar peeked out of the patch’s cloth and ran down the man’s cheek. On that side of his face his hair was parted to cover the patch and the offending scar, but with the wind whipping his hair as furiously as Zack’s, the younger man could see where his time served had touched him.

Behind the man’s head the moon was glowing outside of the ring of a shadow. It was the new moon holding the old moon in its arms. The last time he had seen it he had been in Nibelheim, on the night of the fire. A shiver went down his back, and though he was not terribly superstitious, he could not get that night of horror out of his head.

“It’s not so much the stars,” Zack said, distractedly. The man nodded, seeming to understand. He had told Zack his name was Gabe, short for Gabriel, that he had lost his eye defending his wounded brother in arms, and that he no longer cared for fighting anything other than the sea, though he admitted to Zack that there was no fighting what was always going to win. There was certainty and peace in that, somehow, and Zack could understand that. Angeal had painstakingly tried to instill in Zack an inner peace, a center in which he could always turn from the roiling troubles of the planet to his inner calm. It wasn’t always easy.

One of the things Angeal taught Zack was how to move slowly, purposefully, before he could move with speed again. Zack would whine, tell him it was too hard, that he couldn’t move that slowly, but Angeal taught him that sureness and slow purposeful actions were sometimes harder than fast actions, and often those fast actions made in haste were actions that would cost far greater than what they were worth. In the end, not everything is about speed; some things are to be savored and prolonged.

“When the muscles are lengthened and contracted slowly, the body is more attuned to itself.”

He remembered how Angeal moved in those moments, the way he tried to mimic him but couldn’t. That such a large man could move with such grace often astounded him. And although Angeal taught him things like peace and certainty, he also taught him that nothing was ever guaranteed: life, love . . . those things could be swept up as easily as a ship at sea, and the inner peace came from the knowledge that one could control nothing.

But why then was Angeal so troubled that last year of his life? The Angeal he had known had simply been swallowed up by fear, contempt, and revenge. It was only when faced with the certainty of death that he found his inner peace once more. But the contradiction was in the fact that Zack could see where humanity—where SOLDIER—intervened and tried to control.

After all, we all want to control our own fates.

And perhaps, in a way, Angeal was controlling his fate by ending it. Slowly . . . painfully, but at all times, attuned to his body . . . and attuned to his misery, the unacceptability of his birth. Because, as he once said, we all have our hardships to bear. And perhaps Angeal knew about hardships more than anyone he could have known, though he didn’t speak about his life much. Part of his grace was in accepting and appreciating all the steps he had to take to be what he had become. It only made sense that he would have trouble accepting that who he thought he was had been a lie.

But even still . . . to Zack, it had only been one more thing that Angeal had overcome.

“Why aren’t you with your friends?” Gabe asked. He had pity in his eyes. Though he was no SOLDIER, he understood what the burdens of a soldiering life were, perhaps more than Zack. The Shinra Guard was expendable, the first line of defense. Gabe had probably seen more of his comrades die than Zack had. Perhaps that contributed to the strange innocence that the young man exuded.

Zack looked up at Gabe and seemed to come back to the present once more, smiling softly, though it wouldn’t and couldn’t reach his eyes.

“How is he doing?” he asked.

“Not much of a seafaring type,” Gabe laughed.

“Never was,” Zack recalled, remembering when he’d met up with Cloud the second time back in Junon. He was pale, his skin was clammy, and he’d tried so hard to appear fine, though it was clear that he’d been miserable the entire way from Midgar and would probably continue to feel miserable for several more hellish hours until the seawater air stopped blowing into his helmet.

When he returned below deck it was reluctantly. There was Lazard to deal with, and the specter of his former mentor and lover. Zack didn’t even want to see the man, and Lazard could sense that.

“Believe me when I say I am sorry to know what should have been kept secret,” Lazard said softly. Zack barely heard Angeal in the man’s voice anymore, and he was thankful.

“Likewise, I guess,” Zack shrugged. He sat beside Cloud, listening to the whimpers, watching his head thrash, and trying to calm the boy, however futilely, with hands that swept sweaty blond hair out of new mako eyes.

“I’ve heard of mako poisoning,” Lazard sighed, “but I’ve never actually witnessed it. It must be hell.”

“Yeah,” Zack said, “it is.” He might not have been put through it, but he’d been with Cloud every step of the way. There was a long silence between the two men, until Lazard noticed Zack staring at him from his seat on Cloud’s cot.

“You and Angeal…”

“Yeah,” Zack said, looking away. In the mostly dark quarters, Lazard could see shadows and the light of Zack’s mako-enhanced eyes. Cloud’s too. “So did he eat?” Zack asked, pulling the covers up under Cloud’s chin.

“Barely,” Lazard said, shaking his head. “He kept calling for you . . .”

Zack stared down at the sword that peeked out from underneath Cloud’s cot and looked up at Lazard, his eyes taking him in, appreciating him for what he had done for both him and Cloud, for being given a chance to feel Angeal near him again.

“Thank you,” he whispered. He’d noticed right after they’d left Gongaga that Lazard was favoring one of his sides, but materia was useless against degradation, and there was the lingering inevitability of what would eventually happen. Zack had stared with such intensity that Lazard looked away. He couldn’t be what Zack wanted most, but he could sacrifice himself for what he knew was right. It was time, after years and years of being obsessed with revenge against his family that he step up and do what he was truly meant to do—help others at the cost of his own life. It was only a matter of time for him anyway, and something inside him, perhaps the very spirit of Angeal, told him that these two needed his help more than anything.

It was unsurprising when, later that night, Zack had settled into his cot, mako eyes casting soft blue light over them both.

“How much of him is there?” Zack whispered, eyes searching, fingers sweeping over cold stony features. There was so much hurt in his mako eyes.

“Enough,” Lazard whispered back, arms circling around Zack to hold him near. Most of what was part of Angeal within Lazard was what he could only equate to gut feelings that weren’t his own, thoughts and memories that, half-formed, plagued him. But for Zack’s sake he could be Angeal right now. Needed to be. As the former director of SOLDIER, Lazard knew all too clearly that within each of its members was a child forced to grow up too soon. As strong as this elite force of men was, they were all simply young men, mostly teenagers, with boyhood dreams of becoming heroes. Maybe the role was forced upon them, such as in Sephiroth’s case, but they all needed heroes of their own, men who could shoulder their burdens, and although Lazard was no hero, he could certainly shoulder Zack’s burdens for the night in order to let the young man sleep.

-x-x-x-

No wonder no wonder,

Other half,

Strange steps

Heels turned black

The cinders they splinter

And light the path

These strange steps

Trace us back trace us back

-x-x-x-

Zack half expected Banora to be rebuilt from the ashes it had once been reduced to, much like Nibelheim had been rebuilt, but when they arrived, it was still very much the same as he had left it, only the dumbapples had begun to grow once more out of their own ashes, though they didn’t look as full and glorious, and parts were uncovered he hadn’t seen before. As he dragged Cloud beside him, he could feel Lazard land beside him heavily, still favoring his wounded side.

“Dumbapples only grow in Banora,” Lazard said aloud as if only musing it to himself. It had been the reason they’d risked their lives to board the seaman’s ship—if dumbapples could only grow in one part of the planet, then Genesis must have been giving Zack a very big hint as to where the source of his headgames were coming from.

“Why is that again?” Zack asked as he set Cloud down beside the strange curve of a tree. He was reminded of the apple orchard that had once surrounded Rhapsodos Manor, the largest of the trees where Genesis had buried the bodies of his parents. Genesis remained a strange mystery to him. How could he save what he didn’t understand? Why had the SOLDIER killed his own parents? Because they had kept the truth from him?

“The soil here is special somehow,” Lazard said. “Many have attempted to grow dumbapples elsewhere, but they can only mature in this region.” Zack seemed to ponder on that a few moments more.

“Genesis was always carrying a dumbapple around. I should have noticed sooner.” Upon inspecting the area some more, Zack found that this particular area had been unknown to him on his previous visit. It looked almost ancient, like it had been nearly untouched by humanity. For some reason he was drawn to it, but he knew exploring would simply take too long if he had Cloud with him. He looked back at Lazard, watching him set himself beside Cloud, his hand clutching his side.

“I don’t remember this place being like this,” he mused aloud. “Can you look after Cloud for me?” His eyes were sympathetic, but he knew Genesis would be here, and both Lazard and Cloud would only hold him back from discovering what he needed, whatever that might be. Lazard only nodded, waving Zack on. As he moved farther and farther away a gnawing guilt ate at him—he hadn’t wanted to leave them there, and he had a strange feeling about the rough-hewn face of this cliff, but he knew he needed to be here, so he pushed onward. As he approached the edge of a cliff he saw a bright green light that nearly blinded him leading down into a rocky entrance way. Its glimmering reaches almost touched the sky. He marveled at it for a few moments before he saw an opening to a cave beneath him. His gut told him to enter and run away at the same time, even as he noticed there was no way to come back up.

“I guess I jump here,” he said to himself. “No turning back after this . . .”

After he’d thudded to the ground, he looked around, brushing himself off. Where he ended up looked to be a stony path, glowing softly from an unknown source of light. Finally he noticed the hole directly in front of him, and went forward, suddenly in the midst of a stony hideout. He noticed a desk and was immediately drawn to it. Cut around it was a bookcase filled with various scrapbooks, two of which were open on the desk, along with some loose papers. The first scrapbook was mostly made up of newspaper clippings concerning the Rhapsodos family name. The articles went back as far as maybe a hundred years. Zack scanned the contents as if trying to find where Genesis had gone wrong, why he had done something as horrible as to kill the people who had raised him. When he got to the page the book had been opened to, he gently slid his fingers along the picture of Genesis as a boyof twelve wearing a prize ribbon. The caption read, “Banora White Juice, National Agricultural Contest. Manufacturing Department—Most Valuable Player.” The article went on to quote Genesis to have said that he wished to share the fruit with his childhood hero, Sephiroth, who was his same age. Zack put the book down and took up the other book. This book hadn’t been opened to any particular page, and when he looked at the cover it was obvious it had been written on by Genesis, though the script he recognized as belonging to the man was tighter, more practiced, as if it had been drilled into him. As Genesis had grown older, the ritual of writing had probably become less important, less of an obsessive perfection. There were other things to obsess over as a member of SOLDIER, more important drills. There was one other person’s handwriting on the cover, and this one was small and less fancy than Genesis’s, but clearly legible.

In big calligraphic letters Genesis had written “Destiny”, followed underneath by his own signature, which was followed by Angeal’s. Zack traced Angeal’s signature, clutching the book to his chest for a moment. Zack couldn’t imagine Angeal as a boy, even though he’d seen the picure of he and Genesis as young boys in Gillian’s house. Partly it was because Angeal, though even still a young man at the time of his death, always acted older than he really was. He was sure that even as a very young boy that Angeal was just as stoic and severe as he was when Zack had met him.

Zack slowly opened the clearly well-loved book and found many clippings of articles centered around Sephiroth. The pictures that scattered the clippings of Sephiroth showed a bored, aloof, and sometimes sad little boy who never knew love, who was brought up by the trials of war, and who had cherubic little cheeks much like Cloud’s had been when he had just met him. Between clippings there were some aspirations, some written by Genesis, some written by Angeal, and there were also some portraits signed by Genesis. One of the portraits was of Angeal’s face, so detailed and so beautifully drawn that Zack’s eyes became wet. Here were the dreams of two young boys who wanted nothing more than to become heroes, two young boys who were very close friends. Zack left the book open on that portrait and gathered up some of the letters next, which were not letters so much as various notes from Angeal, written hastily to Genesis.

“I’m sorry that Mother seems strange lately. She seems so sad . . . but she won’t talk about it. It’s probably about Father. When she looks at me, all I see is her sadness. I see her look at you the same way sometimes. Is that why you stopped coming around lately? Let’s meet by the marigolds. I have to ask you something important.”

“Genesis . . .

Haven’t seen you in two weeks. Your mother says you’ve been sleeping in the orchards. I come look for you, but you’re not there. Our usual spot? You know where it is and when I’m there.”

“I heard about the fight. Why didn’t you tell me? Tomorrow. Be there.”

Zack moved a few more notes aside and found a book stuck with a few pictures inside. Genesis kneeling by the statue of a young armored woman. Angeal, with his back to the camera, tilling soil. A line of carefully planted marigolds. Angeal brandishing a wooden sword. Genesis running through a field, a tiny speck. Gillian showing off freshly baked muffins, looking sheepish. The pictures, the books, the letters, they all told the story of destiny. Why did it have to end up so tragically sad? It was clear that the two friends, though they came from vastly different families, drew strength from one another, and they in turn brought that strength into Sephiroth’s life. Angeal later brought that same very strength to Zack. He pondered Genesis’s obsession with destiny and Loveless for a few moments, but was interrupted by a voice drifting from a place that seemed close and yet far away.

“I told you,” it said, “I would make you understand.”

Zack went farther into the cave, head buzzing with Genesis’s voice, Genesis’s laughter, Genesis’s crying.

-x-x-x-

So Genesis has ensnared Zack into the deep dark recesses of his mind. Trust me, it’s a scary place to be. I’m sure if Zack had stayed looking at more of those books he’d find pictures of Sephiroth drawn by Genesis in compromising positions. But that’s for a far lighter story. More angst to follow, I’m afraid. Hope you’ll come back for more! Please spare a few moments to review if you enjoy the story. Oh, and I’d also like to take a moment to thank SilentTweek for the translations of Crisis Core’s Japanese script. Until recently I’ve been working off cutscenes on YouTube and the English game script put up over at ShatterHeart, but for some reason the ending part of the game is left off ShatterHeart so I’ve had to switch over. I also work off the original FFVII game script hosted on Fortune City by Little Chiba. If it weren’t for awesome people like them, this mess wouldn’t be here.

‘Til next time!