A/N: I like post-game happy endings as much as the next person, but I wanted to reconcile them with the Red-has-puppies scene from the ending. Apologies if it's been done before. Also, I was under the distinct impression that Lifestream tied in with some sort of reincarnation; don't flame me if I'm wrong.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
It wasn't the end of the world.
When Meteor hit, they rebuilt Midgar, as much as they could. Parts of the city were inhabited again as little as a year later, though others remained in ruins. They found alternate power sources. They worked around their problems and through them. They rebuilt their lives. I watched my friends do it; find happiness, or fail to, have children, grow old and die.
I watched their children do the same. Generations went on that way. But the land wasn't as alive as it used to be. Harvests yielded less and less every year, and a severe drought lasted nearly a generation before the next rain fell. The resources they mined from the planet for their electricity were becoming more scarce. And Midgar was rocked by a series of earthquakes, four in twenty years. Finally it was abandoned by all but the squatters.
They realized something had to give, and with that, humanity split in two. Not violently, not suddenly, but decisively. In Cosmo Canyon, Gongaga, and any number of similar communities, they made no change, simply continued to farm the reluctant soil. Everywhere else, they began to plan.
Two more generations, to find another planet, to build the ships, to cut their ties to the earth. Two generations, and they left. Some of my friends' descendants were on the ships. Some stayed behind. It had been so long that they didn't know their ancestors any longer, not really. Family legends survived, but nothing more. Not even those still exist. It's been too long.
There are a few thousand here, still, but they have few children. A cult of sorts started around Aerith; it started long years ago, and I never spoke the truth. It's experiencing a revival now, and a shift in dogma. Now, they believe celibacy is best, because after all, Aerith died unmarried, left no child behind. And neither will they, many of them. These beliefs are popular with the younger generation. I haven't calculated their birthrate in some time, but I doubt it will be long. My people really will be the Planet's only guardians, after this. We should outlive the injury, see the world healed again. My descendants will, even if I and my children do not.
They did that for us, before they left. The ones with the technology, that is. They cloned me, and my mate Jajuka. With alterations in the genetic code for variety. No worry about souls; rebirth has to find some form, after all, and the souls in the Lifestream had fewer human bodies to inhabit in the later days. No worry about identity, either, because we know that the soul is not cloned. We can have pups of our own; the younger generation are nearly old enough to begin multiplying themselves. I don't mind calculating our birthrate.
And things could be worse for the humans. They weren't killed by Meteor, or in some apocalyptic war. They weren't starved out by overpopulation or felled by plague. The ones that remain are peaceful; the last of them, no doubt, will die of old age. That's all you can wish for people you care about, and in a way I care about all of them. And there are still humans out there. They'll have learned a lesson about caring for a Planet, I think. They'll be all right, and the Planet will heal.
But I hate to see them go.