FicWad

Stained Halo
Chapter 2: Consequence
Cold stares were fixed upon a mother daughter pair as a train rumbled along its tracks. The mother's incessant coughing and the young girl's sad whimpers weren't enough to instill pity into the tired travelers around them that had seen scenes such as this unfold countless times before. After all, this was the unfeeling city of Midgar. But the sick outbursts were enough to keep the passengers awake and thus annoyed.

"Ten minutes until arrival at the Midgar train station, please start gathering your belongings. Ten minutes until arrival at the Midgar train station, please start gathering your belongings."

The voice on the intercom broke off in cue with another violent wave of coughing erupting from the sick mother. The little girl hugged her fiercely as if to shield her from whatever evil force was making her so sick.

After gaining control of herself, the mother cupped her daughter's face in her hands and tried to smile as best she could to offer some strange comfort to them both. This sorrowful play of pretend that the situation at hand wasn't occurring was shattered when the mother referred back to it, "We're almost there honey, do you remember what I told you?"

The girl nodded sadly, remembering the occurrences of the past two days. After breaking out from the lab they had run so long. It had seemed they were getting away until a bullet hit her mother. It had been so awful, she'd never seen so much blood in her life, and to see it on her mom had been too much. At the last minute her mother had managed a healing spell to get herself back on her feet. By some miracle they'd gathered the strength to run on and take refuge on a train heading to Midgar. She was so sure that she and her mother were safe then. That everything would be all right. But the realization that the healing spell would only hold for a temporary amount of time came as hard as the bullet itself. She didn't understand why this was happening, and why her mother had made her promise to leave her once they arrived in the city. It made no sense to her at all, but she was so desperate to make her mother happy, to make her well again, that she'd agreed as soon as she explained their imminent goodbye.

The exhausted woman leaned her head back against the window, trying to keep the pain within her body from driving her into deliriousness, and concentrated on communicating with the Planet. Those that had always guided her were speaking of her daughter's great importance as the last in their lineage, of her safekeeping in the hands of a woman that she would soon meet.

/Don't cry now/, she told herself. Her vision focused on her daughter, her beautiful, beautiful daughter, who at the moment was so scared and confused that it broke her heart to look at her. She lifted her little chin up to meet her eye to eye.

"Aeris, we're almost there sweetie," she stroked her hair and added, "I love you."

"Mama, I know I promised, but can't you come with me once we arrive? You seem to be getting better and I'll bet there are doctors and..." Aeris offered a smile, as if with that suggestion she had just fixed the entire situation, but Ifalna seemed to only grow sadder.

"Oh, honey, you know why I can't come with you," she stroked her hair sympathetically, "But that doesn't mean it's goodbye forever. I'll be with you just as our people are with you."

Aeris shook her head as tears welled up in her eyes, "No Mama, they don't hug me, don't kiss me goodnight, they don't sing to me when I'm sad, Mama I don't want to leave you. I can't leave you." She buried her face in her mother's chest, softly crying.

"Oh please don't cry my angel. There'll be someone else who'll do all that for you. The Cetra told me you'll have a guardian who will take good care of you." But she herself was fighting the lump in her throat threatening to turn into sobs. She couldn't help it. This was so hard - too hard. At this point, the train came to a stop and the passengers began to make their way out. Gathering all her strength and grinding her teeth to keep herself from crying out in pain, Ifalna stood up, grabbed Aeris' hand, and began to stumble towards the exit. Their fellow passengers cleared a path for them, too disgusted and scared to make contact with whatever disease the woman might be carrying.

As they stepped into the humid air outside, Ifalna's eyes began frantically searching for the woman that was meant to keep Aeris safe. Panic rose through her as her search proved fruitless, but it was subdued upon seeing the same woman she had seen in her dreams so many times the past few nights. She squeezed Aeris' hand and began to make her way over to her daughter's salvation. That's when the pain intensified into a blinding sensation.

"Ahh, I can't..."

In midstep she collapsed onto the concrete without enough strength to gather herself up again. She heard Aeris scream and everything began to go blurry. But she wouldn't let herself slide, not until the woman took her daughter.

She looked over to where she was standing; relieved to see she was already making her way over with a worried expression.

"Please..." she choked out as Aeris bent over her form, sobbing uncontrollably.

Everything was so hard, so painful, but it was all going to plan, and in that she felt peace. The woman was moving over hurriedly, reaching her arm slightly forward as if that gesture would decrease the time it took to reach them - until a male voice shattered everything.

"Elmyra!" It came strong and clear, and it was terrible.

The woman froze, and her brown eyes widened with disbelief as she spun around and ran over to the source of the voice. Upon reaching him and being hit by the realization of his being alive and well, she leapt into his arms and showered him with kisses. She did not so much as glance back at Ifalna and Aeris as he carried her off. Aeris' caretaker was gone. Gone. Gone. And Ifalna felt her own life slipping; she knew she only had a few more minutes. A wave of panic pushed into her lungs as she felt the despair of the Ancients add to her own, their voice breaking into her thoughts.

/He was not supposed to live./

You swore.

We cannot control what happens in your world.

But you SWORE.

Her fate is one and the same, just...

But the anger seething within her blocked the remainder of their words. The Planet had failed them, had failed Aeris, their precious "last Ancient".

Don't you DARE speak of her fate. From this point on she owes you nothing.

Nothing.

As death's strong grasp pulled her one way, her angry determination pulled her the other. And with all that was left in her she looked up at her little girl whose puffy, red eyes were filled with fear.

"I love you, Aeris. I'm so, so, so sorry," but she wouldn't let it end this way. If the Planet abandoned her daughter, she would certainly make sure it received no better treatment, "From now on you take care of only yourself. Don't listen to them. Just shut them out, keep them out of your mind. Don't do anything they ask you ... you live ... you live for yourself and no one else, swear ... it."

"Mama..."

"Please, swear."

Aeris nodded hastily, not really understanding, but feeling it awfully important to do so anyway, "I swear, Mama, I swear."

And Ifalna closed her eyes not in peace, nor in panic - she closed them knowing that for better or for worse, fate would hold no power over her daughter. Aeris had promised.


Emerald eyes shot wide open as Aeris woke up gasping. She sat up in bed trembling, cold sweat trickling down her face, and laid her forehead in her hands to try to gain control over the emotions racing through her. Her nervous form jumped in fear when she felt a warm arm wrap around her waist. But upon recognizing it a second later she took comfort in its support. Her soft gasps were joined by a groggy voice in interrupting the silence that wished to fill the dark room.

"Another one?"

She responded with a nod, "The same one again, it's been coming for a week straight."

With a tired sigh, the man lying next to her sat up and placed his free arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and yawning.

"The one about your past," he added in a sleepy tone.

She let herself relax against him, not commenting on the obvious. His patience was surely slipping with all her nightmares waking him constantly, but she couldn't help it. She had written this dream off as a bad flashback the first three times it visited her. But now she could no longer do that. Either she had worse mental issues than she thought, or something was trying to alert her of ... something else. It made no sense really; she had done everything in her power to forget her past, why would it just suddenly rise up on her again? And so powerfully at that...

Her focus moved over to the open window that displayed the dark blue of the night sky broken by the looming danger that hung among its stars. A bright orange meteor had been visibly taunting the Planet with threats to its life for two days now. It was a wonder anyone on the Planet could sleep knowing what was rapidly approaching. The man next to her, in his usual fashion, had seemed totally unaffected when it first appeared. Midgar was a hardened city, and its inhabitants were so emotionally calloused that not even the Apocalypse seemed to stir much beyond annoyance and regret that they'd never gotten out of the hellhole. But this dream... A part of her nudged at the notion that it was somehow connected with the meteor's appearance. She blew her bangs out of her eyes, irritated with herself. She was probably just going through some emotional crisis due to all that had been going on in her life the past few months, and the meteor was just a catalyst for some big breakdown. And she was just being silly and overly emotional in front of the one person who hated seeing that in people.

"I'm sorry, let's just go back to sleep, this is..."

Her words were cut short when the Planet's scream suddenly reverberated through her skull. It was utter torture. She tore out of the man's grasp and stumbled out of bed, clutching her head to make it stop. Over the years her mother's bitter whispers had urged her to block the Planet's voice from her mind - she had barely heard its whimpers, and now its sudden desperate cry was too much for her to handle. She would have collapsed on the floor if two quick arms hadn't caught her first. At first she struggled against them, wanting nothing more than to hurl herself on the floor and knock herself out if that's what it took to make the Planet's pain stop invading her. But he only tightened his grip and shouted her name to bring her back to him. To his horror she went completely still.

"Oh fuck. Aeris, wake up!" He began to shake her, thinking she'd fainted or worse. But a breath of relief escaped his lips when he saw her blink. She seemed to be listening very intently to something that he couldn't hear, and all he could do was watch her face grow with worry. Ages seemed to pass, and he grew more and more impatient and was about to break her out of her daze with a slap, when her focus suddenly shifted to the window past his shoulder. Something in her gaze disturbed him - something that looked so tragically, hopelessly sad. He couldn't take it.

"Just what the hell is going on with you?"

She shook her head sadly.

"I listened to them...to her. For the first time in years, and..." Her eyes met his, and he noticed how full of tears they were. She was making absolutely no sense, and he would've thrown in an exasperated comment about her needing to get a damn hold of herself if that look in her eyes weren't there. The look that told him she was completely sane and on the verge of revealing something terribly important. One of her slender hands pushed a strand of his fiery hair out of his face as her other hand moved up to cover her mouth as a sob fell through her lips.

"Oh Reno," she breathed out, "it wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be anything like this."

But it was. And it could all traced back to a solemn night at a solemn train station fifteen years in the past.