Scrib!Fic - A Triangle of Many Sides (1/??)
Title and Link: A Triangle of Many Sides
Author: Scribbler
Rating: T
General Fic Summary: A hero dies on a cliff. A damaged boy cries over his friend. A girl waits in Midgar for a lover who never comes. An AWOL Turk runs for her life. Their stories don't start or end here. Cloud, Zack, Aerith & Cissnei have a secret Shinra can never learn ...
AN: This is something of a special project, as it started life as a three-chapter fic called 'Triangle', written several years ago, around the time I first got into FFVII and was fascinated by the connections between Zack, Aerith and Cloud. That original fic can still be found on FFN, but the idea itself has since grown into substantially more. Though it still focuses a lot on Cloud, Zack and Aerith, the scope has widened to include most, if not all, of the cast, including some secondary characters such as the Turks. Though I haven't quite finished, it currently stands at 318 pages and spans most of the timeline. All I ask is that you please give it a chance to make sense and it will.
Excerpt:
She moved away from the others, to the crest of the hill where the least injured had been working since sun-up. It was nearly sundown now. She crested the rise and half-skidded a few feet down the mud on the other side before she could stop herself. Her knees nearly buckled, and not from exhaustion.
"Gaia forgive me ..." she gasped.
Her eyes stung. She was the leader - the first to unite so many tribes in hundreds of years - and leaders had to be strong.
But she'd never asked to be leader. It was just necessity when humans left only five of her tribe alive and JENOVA infected four of them. She had lost her husband to that creature. She should have felt vindicated. She had avenged him. Instead, all she felt was tired and miserable, as if the Cetra had been defeated.
"I only did what I thought was right." Her eyes filled with tears as she surveyed rows upon rows of freshly turned dirt. Like all living things, Cetra returned to the Planet when they died. Life grew from death just like death followed life. "I only did what seemed right."
A mother cried beside a tiny grave. A man tenderly stroked a pile of mud that covered someone he loved. All around her, people grieved. Her new senses caught their feelings like magical spiderwebs.
"I was wrong," she whispered. "We're too few. How can we survive now? I made a mistake. We should have done like the humans and hidden. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry …"