The Wastelands Outside of Midgar, Friday Afternoon
Reno
Wastelands. Wastelands as far as the freaking eye could see, between Kalm and Edge. Up ahead, there was the hulking monolith that used to be Midgar, and all around them it was rock and sand, and dead, scorched earth.
What a fucking waste.
Reno scowled, scraping his teeth against his tongue and spitting on the cracked roadway as he steered the hover onward. The sooner they could get back to Edge, the sooner they could book a portal to Fandom and get Karla out of here. He could spend a weekend on the island again. Graduation was this weekend, right? And he had more than one Rookie graduating, so he'd better be there.
Rocks and sand. Fucking hell.
"Good thing about the wastelands is that they actually can't get any worse," he sighed under his breath, turning his eyes back toward the road. "Was worth a shot, anyhow."
Elena
"We should have warned you," Elena said, gently. "We didn't just hurt the planet. We damn near destroyed it."
Who knew crazed ecoterrorists would be right on that point? Psychos who wanted to save the world by killing everyone on it did not usually bother with scientific research.
Maybe ShinRa should have paid more attention to the land around Midgar.
Maybe all the "maybe"-ing in the world wasn't going to change a damn thing now.
"I guess Queens have never had to deal with ... radiation fallout, huh?"
Karla
Karla was still too busy looking around in horror to answer--or even register their comments. How could it still be all gray and dead and awful? Had she done something wrong? Had she not tried hard enough? She'd realized within a few minutes of arriving that she'd been arrogant to assume that she could heal everything, but surely there should be signs of something taking affect? The way the spell had been set up, it should have continued cleansing and spreading, purifying the poisons and bringing life back to the dead earth. True, she'd had to make up large chunks of the spell, but this kind of Craft was instinctive, part of her very nature.
How could she have gotten it so wrong?
Stricken, pale, and trembling, Karla looked out at the gray dust of the wastelands and tried not to cry. All those poor people...all that dying earth...the Church had been so happy.
Reno
Reno suspected that it didn't take a hell of a lot to make Aerith happy. He also suspected that a less-living Aerith was probably even more indiscriminate, though he doubted anyone was going to come falling through her ceiling any time soon...
Wastelands, wastelands, wastelands, green, wastela--
Hang on back there, Reno was slamming on the brakes.
Elena
Elena did not put it past Aerith to have some sort of rigged ceiling, in the Lifestream. Just to make the place feel cozy.
That train of thought was killed by the sudden stop in movement, which nearly flung Elena off the hover entirely.
"The fuck?"
Reno was not as funny as he thought he was.
Karla
"Oof!" Karla also tumbled forward, falling to her hands and knees. She scrambled up immediately, self-recrimination discarded in the face of a possible threat. She knew that monsters traveled around. It was something Zack talked about a lot. "Is something wrong? Is everyone okay?"
Reno
"Everyone's fine, yo," Reno replied, glancing over to make sure that the two girls hadn't ended up on the road. "Gimmie a sec, I gotta turn this rig around."
Which was not really all that difficult, considering he could just take it off-road and pull a U-turn on the dead freaking highway, yes. He was going considerably more slowly when he got them pointed the other way, and he pulled up and parked it next to what had caught his eye, jumping off and sauntering out into the wastes.
Wastelands, wastelands, green. Not much green, no. But enough to catch his eye, as though somebody had thrown down a handful of grass seed on the side of the road, and now it was trying to sprout in spite of the sand and scorching sun.
"Sprouts."
Elena
"Sprouts?"
Elena was staring at Reno like he had maybe lost his mind.
As she got closer, this quickly switched to staring at the ground as though it may have lost its mind.
She knelt by the side of the road, reaching out to check the sprouts. Hesitantly. They might crumble at her touch. They might only be a mirage.
"How ..."
Karla
From depressed to jubilant in 2.3 seconds, that was Karla. "It worked!" she said, exulting. "We did it! Look! Look!" she wasn't pointing at the sprouts, but at the earth below. Rather than the endless gray dust of the wasteland around them, the land was brownish dirt. Not quite rich or healthy enough to be called soil, but more than enough to sustain life. "This isn't a one-time thing. Those sprouts will stay. And--"
Karla looked up sharply, towards a small cliff in the distance facing Midgar. "There's more," she said quietly. Then took off at a dead run, not bothering to explain any further.
Reno
Reno blinked at the dirt. And then at Karla. And then at Elena. And then back after Karla. Who was running off alone and un-freakin'-armed in the middle of the wastes.
Toward... Toward a cliff.
"Fuck my life," Reno groaned. And then he was taking off at a run after her. Not that it would be particularly difficult for him to catch up, thank the gods.
Elena
Common sense would have said that Elena should stay back with the hover, since she couldn't run as fast as Reno and couldn't do whatever the fuck it was that Karla was doing.
Common sense went out the window when it was your rookie charging through the wastelands, blissfully unaware of the freakish monsters who would consider her a tasty lunch entree.
She'd catch up ... eventually.
Karla
Karla did stupid things sometimes when she got excited, okay? And had kind of forgotten about the roaming monsters in the wake of said excitement. And would have snapped something about Craft being more than a match for anything, while completely ignoring just how badly she'd depleted her energy reserves just the day before.
But something was hovering at the edges of her senses. She knew there was something more than mere sprouts over here. It was that same familiar nameless recognition she'd had at the Church.
So she ran, aware that Reno was keeping pace with her, but since he hadn't actually bothered to try to stop her, she ignored him. And only skidded to a stop when she reached the top of the cliff--and saw the wide patch of bright green grass that was even now spreading to reclaim the earth around it. In the center was a profusion of bright, yellow flowers, so thick that no hint of green showed through.
Reno
Reno hated everything in the universe ever, for the record.
"Huh. Look at that. Grass."
Yeah. He'd totally never been here before. Truly. Which completely explained why his voice was so flat and why he looked like he was contemplating grabbing Karla by the arm to drag her away, only that didn't seem like a great idea at the moment, either.
Elena
"Flowers," Elena said, staring in reverence. "Real ones. Do you know what this means?"
She looked over at Reno to see if he was getting the full magnitude of this, and ... and Reno was looking grumpy.
There were flowers and Reno wanted to be anywhere else but here. What the hell!?
It had to be something from before her time. Was this a toxic waste dump she hadn't heard about? Was there something wrong with the flowers?
Could he at least give her a hint?
Times like this, she wished the Turks had their own private language.
Karla
Karla was kneeling down next to the flower patch, her eyes closed and her expression reverent. Other than being inside the Church, which had clearly been a special and sacred place, this was the first time since stepping through the Portal that she didn't feel slightly nauseous.
"Isn't it odd?" she asked, smiling a little. She leaned forward to brush a kiss onto one of the flowers "This place feels almost familiar to me. Like I should know it or recognize it or something."
Reno
"Must be the flowers, yo." Reno shot a meaningful look toward Elena. "Funny, yellow flowers, here an' at the church like that. These ones must be those ones' boyfriends or some junk."
Har. Har. Har.
"Shouldn't stick around here too long, yo. Monsters. Portal to catch. All that."
Elena
Reno had lost his mind. "Boyf--"
Orrrrrrrrrrr possibly she should keep her mouth shut until she caught up. She was never going to learn that, was she?
Flowers here. To match the ones in the church. Aerith's boyfriend had been killed ... somewhere in the wastelands.
It was before her time. No reason she should have known the spot.
"Oh, fuck," she said, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Here?"
Pull it the fuck together, Elena.
"Here! Here is -- not the portal location," she managed, trying to sound like that was totally what she meant. "And oh fuck, is it late. We can't miss this portal or I won't get to graduate."
Graduation was tomorrow. Tomorrow evening, for that matter.
Karla
"Zack."
Karla hadn't paid them much attention at all, far too caught up in trying to sort out that elusive feeling of recognition. The fact that Elena had caught up to them had only barely registered on her consciousness, never mind what they were saying to each other. Or her. Which was why she snapped her fingers and started talking before Elena had finished babbling about graduation.
"It feels like Zack!" she cried, pleased she'd figured it out. "If I close my eyes, it feels like Zack is standing right...there." She pointed to a spot towards the edge of the cliff. "Isn't that funny?"
And then she fully looked at both of them. And saw Reno's expression and heard Elena's stumbling excuse. "Why does it feel like Zack, Reno?" she asked softly.
Reno
Stupid almost-ancients and their stupid ability to know things because of the stupid freaking land. Reno was scowling, now, looking resolutely out toward the ruins of Midgar. Past Elena and Karla, past the flowers and the wastelands and Edge. Just ruins.
"Hard to say," he replied, idly. "Could be he spent some time here, yo."
Yeah. Right.
Elena
"We left the hover," Elena said, folding her arms and not meeting Karla's eyes. "Someone could steal it. Or attack it. And then we will miss our portal."
Karla
Karla drew herself up. "Look. I didn't press too hard about Aerith because her secrets are her own and therefore none of my business." She then gave them a look that asked, you guys didn't really think I fell for that whole bit about breakfast, did you? "But Zack is my friend. And I'm not an idiot or a child and I'd appreciate not being treated like one."
Elena
As the junior member, Elena should have stepped back and let Reno handle this. Except Karla was her rookie, dammit, and more than that, her friend. Elena had dragged her all the way out here. Karla deserved better than being brushed aside. Elena had always hated that, too.
"I'm sorry," she said firmly. That went first. "No one thinks you're an idiot. Terrible things happened. In our past, and Zack's future. But we can't stop them from happening, this time around. Millions of lives may hang in the balance."
Zack saved Cloud. Cloud finished off Sephiroth, minutes before Meteor would have destroyed Gaia. Aerith, being dead, had been able to use the Lifestream against Meteor, once Sephiroth was gone. Two senseless deaths. Saving either, breaking the link, might destroy the chain.
"So there are things that -- we can't tell you. And that you don't want to know. Things that are completely fucking unfair. Maybe it was unfair to bring you here, even."
It probably was. But they were desperate. Most people who had survived were.
Karla
"I understand that," Karla said, voice low but resolute. "There are things I can't know and of the things I do know, there are things I can't talk about to anyone in Fandom. We agreed on that before I stepped through the portal that brought me here. And I'm not going to do or say anything that could doom millions of people I don't know."
She turned back towards the bed of flowers and pointed. "You think that telling me this one thing is going to change my mind about that? I spilled my lifeblood on the floor of your fucking church to bring this planet back to life. I already know too much about what Zack's future holds. So telling me this one thing--giving me the courtesy of knowing--adding one more number to the dead--" she sputtered, came to a stop, and hung her head. "I don't need to know how or why. I just want to know for sure."
Reno
Reno frowned as he listened, keeping his eyes on the ruins. Always on the ruins. A mass-graveyard for millions of people. Plenty of those were on his head.
He needed to get the fuck out of this place.
"That," he said, nodding toward what was once the city he called home, "ain't his future." A pause, and then he looked at the flowers nearby. "That is."
She was right. She had every right to know. But then, a lot of people did. And he hated the hell out of that fact.
Karla
Karla bowed her head. She'd expected as much. There had been too few other reasons why Zack's psychic scent had lingered on. And why this patch out of the entire city and wastelands combined would have still clung to life.
That didn't make it any less painful for her to hear.
She had so many questions, now. How long? being the first. Mother Night, would he make it to his own graduation? She wasn't sure how far down the timeline Elena was from Zack, but she knew it wasn't long. Did he die alone? Was it slow or fast? Did he die in pain or in peace?
But she swallowed all those words back. Two tears hit the ground at her feet but she ignored them. "I swear by my Jewels that I won't say anything when we get home. No one will know I was even here."
Elena
"I believe you," Elena said. "I'm sorry that you had to find out like this."
She was sorry Karla had to know at all. Maybe she shouldn't have brought her. It didn't seem fair, to repay the other girl's gift with ... well. This.
Some days Elena wondered if Edge didn't deserve most of what it was getting. Maybe that was the reason Tseng was reluctant to leave Edge: because they didn't deserve the promise of a future somewhere else.
Maybe it wasn't Tseng who thought that, exactly.
Reno
Reno hesitated for a moment more, shifted his weight from one foot to the other uneasily. And then turned back toward the highway.
"Come on," he said, lips pulled into a tight frown. "We got a portal to catch, Rookies."
Karla
Karla nodded bleakly. "Wouldn't want to miss it," she said quietly. She wrapped her arms around her waist, drawing inwards on herself. "Let's just go home."
She spoke only once more in the hover. "I don't regret coming here," she said, voice barely audible. "I don't like knowing what I know--but I don't regret it, either."
Elena
"I'm sorry," Elena said, again. There wasn't much else to say.
Later, Karla might scream, or rant, or cry, or need to throw things at her. Elena would understand.
For now, she would listen to the humming of the hover's motor and sit quietly, thinking of everything and nothing all at once.
[And done! Thanks to glacial_witch and findingelena for their participation! This follows this post and is the last one we're going to tack up, honest. NFI, NFB, OOC = Love.]