Paper Tiger Burning

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, and voice actors.




“So, where are we going for this materia?” I asked, wrestling my hair into a braid. Sephiroth had been a little close-mouthed all morning, fretfully silent. What disturbed his peace I didn’t know, but he would surely tell me soon.

“Far,” came Sephiroth’s inscrutable reply. “We’re taking a Shin-Ra helicopter, courtesy of Eldon’s connections with the Turks.” His deep, smooth voice sounded unusually strained.

“I thought you were friends with the Turks too.” I turned to face him, admiring him in his old outfit. That coat just did something for him. Long and elegant, like him, it accentuated his dark power.

“The Turks respect me, there’s a difference,” Sephiroth answered. He shut the last buckle on his boot and stood. “But Eldon is accompanying us. I hope that’s not an issue?”

“I like our alone time, but I can handle a third,” I said, smiling. “I’ll enjoy talking to Eldon. Anyone you think so highly of must be interesting.”

“He’s an interesting person, yes.” Sephiroth took up the bag of food he’d packed barely an hour ago and held out his hand to me. “The chopper is on the roof and has been since before dawn. We have but to phase into it. Eldon awaits.”

I took his hand. When I opened my eyes we were inside the helicopter, safely hidden behind smoked glass. A man of slight but wiry build with dark brown eyes and hair stood to greet me. “I’m Eldon,” he said. “We’ve met but we couldn’t speak.”

“I remember,” I said, smiling at him. Eldon felt like a bundle of nerves. “Are you okay, Eldon?”

“I haven’t had my medicine,” Eldon said. “I assure you it won’t interfere with our mission today.”

“Why haven’t you had your medicine?” Sephiroth frowned.

“I knocked the bottle down the drain.” Eldon shrugged. “No more medicine until payday.”

“Let me see,” I said, holding out my hand. “Take my hand.” Perhaps Sephiroth had been right about my abilities. I knew I could soothe emotions, maybe I could heal the mind as well.

“Miss Gainsborough, I couldn’t,” Eldon protested.

“Do it.” Sephiroth nudged Eldon out of the way and sat at the controls. “Let her help you, Eldon. It is her nature and you’re refusing her gifts.”

Eldon blushed.

I took a slight grip on his fingers. Chaotic thoughts of every type simply surged through this man. I concentrated on slowing them down, on funneling the thoughts into pure lines instead of slapdash thought-splatter. He responded beautifully, as if he wanted my correction. In just a minute his mind flowed with orderly and alert grace. I let go of him. “Better?” I felt amazed it had been so easy.

Sephiroth had been right. I could do more than I thought. This changed a lot of things.

Eldon sank into the co-pilot’s chair looking slightly stunned. “This doesn’t feel like my medication,” he said. “I feel…calm instead of dampened.”

“It won’t last forever,” I said, also sitting. His mind was like a backed-up dam waiting to burst. Only repeated release of the floodwater would relieve him entirely. “Tell me when you start to race ahead of yourself again and I’ll repeat the healing. In time I could maybe cure you altogether, but it would take repeated treatments.” I felt almost giddy with the knowledge that I had the ability to heal minds as well as bodies. It was a lot to think about.

Eldon nodded. Sephiroth started the helicopter with ease, putting his secretary on point. “Eagle-eye Eldon,” he murmured, sitting the man down. “You see everything, so look out for us today, will you?”

“Sure.” Eldon settled in. I lounged on the rear seat, enjoying the rare freedom of a fighting skirt and leggings. Tifa was on to something with this type of clothing. One could sprawl out and not be unladylike or uncomfortable.

I dozed off after about an hour of silent flight. I woke from sensing a change in our velocity. Rubbing my eyes, I glanced out the window. My heart thudded heavily in my chest at the sight. Ajit’s familiar, eerily beautiful landscape met my incredulous eyes. I had met my death here.

Feeling displaced, I shut my eyes again and leaned on the glass. Why would Sephiroth bring us here?

It came to me an instant later. My eyes shot open. Sephiroth knelt just in front of me, his eyes liquid with understanding.

“Holy,” I whispered. “I dropped it here.”

“Yes.” Sephiroth aided me in standing. “If you don’t want to go inside, that’s fine.”

“No, I’ll go,” I insisted. “But this place fills me with such sadness. All my people gone. This is all that’s left.”

“The way of life,” Eldon murmured, opening the helicopter hatch.

**************************************************************************************

I stood at the edge of the water, waiting with Eldon as Sephiroth climbed the platform. He intended to look for the materia from up high, thinking he might see a glint of it from such a position. I thought it would bother me to be here, at the place of my murder, with my murderer no less, but it felt curiously impersonal in that regard. The events had taken place a long time ago, when we were other people.

Eldon squatted next to the frozen lake, his brown eyes looking sightlessly into the water. “What a beautiful place this is, but how beautiful it must have been while flourishing.” He skittered a rock across the ice idly. “I’m sorry all your people are gone, Miss Gainsborough.”

“Thanks.” I cast him a smile. “But humans are my people too.”

Eldon nodded. Together we watched Sephiroth mount the highest dais. “Sometimes I look at him,” Eldon muttered, “and I think he’s a god. Then, he speaks to me and I see him for a man.”

I knew exactly how he felt. I shook my head in weary humor. “Eldon, I know,” I said.

“It doesn’t bother you to be here, where he killed you?” Eldon fixed me with a concerned gaze.

“No.” I watched Sephiroth get his bearings, watched him impatiently swipe his hair out of the way. “Sephiroth was possessed by Jenova when he killed me. It might as well have been someone else, you know?”

“I don’t believe he feels that way,” Eldon said quietly. “He’s shaking.”

Quickly, I focused on Sephiroth again. Eldon spoke truly; Sephiroth’s body did indeed tremble. “It might be hard for him to retrace his steps, see the places he barely recalls,” I replied. “He has only the faintest impression of Ajit, of Nibelheim and of the crimes he committed.”

“He’s a good man underneath all of that…stuff,” Eldon said, returning to his squat. “I saw you in Hojo’s clutches first. He wouldn’t have noticed, having had the old crackpot spinning him up and taking gallons of his blood. But I called his attention to you and his face…” Eldon grimaced. “Normally his face is like stone. No matter what happens he doesn’t change. He does smile, but usually it’s a nasty smile. But that day he lost his stony countenance. I saw him wince when he looked at you. I don’t think he even realized he was putting his hand on the glass.”

“Sephiroth is a far better man than he will ever know or admit,” I agreed. “But I don’t press him. If he wants to continue on as a feared, maligned person, that is his right. And he isn’t entirely wrong about himself; darkness lives within him, and he has made friends with it.”

Sephiroth raised his arm. A bolt of lightning broke the ice below. The shockwaves dislodged the entire sheet of ice while sending ice from the strike into the air in rainbow shards.

“Not a bit of materia on him anywhere,” Eldon murmured. “He doesn’t need it. The Planet lives inside of him.”

Sephiroth stripped off his coat and flung it toward us. It sailed heavily downward, landing at Eldon’s feet. The man picked it up and dusted it off with automatic thoroughness.

Sephiroth performed a beautiful dive. He cut the frigid water and disappeared.

“That water would stop my heart, I’m sure of it,” Eldon said, draping the coat over his arm.

We waited in silence for five minutes. I wondered just how long Sephiroth could hold his breath. Just as I began to truly worry, he shot up from a hole in the ice. Gasping, he stood on a shifting sheet of frozen water. The water and air were so cold I saw frost forming in his hair. He walked from ice block to ice block, hopping across where gaps formed and not slipping a single time.

He didn’t even drip by the time he reached us; the water had frozen his pants and hair.

Sephiroth held open his palm to me. My mother’s precious materia gleamed in his hand. “The most important one,” he said, placing it in my right bracer’s materia slot. He reached into his pants pocket and took out a gleaming black orb. “And the one that I would only trust with you,” he said, putting the black materia in my other bracer. “Only you could hold this materia and not abuse it.”

Now I had a complete set.

Eldon made a small sound of distress. “We need to go.” Sephiroth and I turned to look at him. As one we observed what upset the man so.

Red and pink.

My old body floated at the edge of the river.

I looked at it, strangely undisturbed by seeing my exact image bobbing along in the freezing water, dead and pale and utterly stiff. I saw no difference in it and how I looked now, except for the clothing.

Sephiroth groaned. I looked at him in just enough time to see his eyes roll back. He staggered. I reached out for him, grabbed him by the arm. His body quaked under my touch. “It isn’t me,” I said to him. “I’m right here.”

“Aerith.” He took my hand and held it tightly.

“That’s right.” I put my foot out and kicked my old body, sending it back out into the deeper water. “It’s just a body, Sephiroth; it isn’t me.” It just looked like me, but I was alive and right here.

“But it was,” he asserted, staring at the water. “It was.”

“Not anymore.” I wrapped my arm around his waist. “Let’s go.”