Pertinacity

By Fahiru

I remember those times in between. Wandering the remains of Midgar with the Triple S. Then Rick. Then no one.

We used to make a living by scavenging for scrap metal, believing that we were not only sustaining ourselves through our back breaking, hazardous work; but that we were also moving forward towards a better tomorrow, through finding salvageable materials with which to rebuild our lives in the form of Edge. The new city. The new life. Tomorrow used to mean progress and prosperity. That's what Shinra had told us. Then Shinra betrayed us. In a similar way, tomorrow betrayed us too.

It started when Geostigma took Gaskin. We had mostly avoided it and stayed together up until then, but an already battered train can't keep moving when the engine dies. The cars may keep coasting for awhile, but eventually they, too, will meet the same fate as the engine and go to the train graveyard. My dad had told me that when I asked about all the train cars in the dump. I never thought it would apply to people. In the end, most were claimed by the stigma. One by one, our numbers diminished, until it was just Rick and me.

Rick didn't leave because of the stigma, he left because of me. And yet, I still have to wonder if I didn't catch that rat just because I wasn't as good at hunting as people from the slums; who had little choice but to live that way from the start.

Tomorrow didn't bring what she had promised. Instead, every day she delivered a barren sky and even more barren ruins. I felt like I was the only remaining inhabitant of the desolate wasteland that the lifestream had left us. Wasn't the lifestream supposed to protect the Planet? Hadn't it just ended up taking everything away? Mrs. Ruvie, Gaskin, Triple S, my parents...maybe even Arkham and Rick. They were all gone, absorbed into that ominous threading mass. I was the only one it had left.

It seemed that not even a single rat had been left for me to encounter. That rat I was stalking, daily beating about for in the monotonous exhaustion that had become my life; that rat was my last ambition. I knew I was a goner, I'd be taken by the stigma or malnourishment at some point. But I wouldn't go hungry if I could help it. If I was going to die, then I wanted to do all I could to stay alive first. That rat was my hope.

I never counted on being saved. I'd thought the world had abandoned me. That I was meant to die alone because I had lived this long while so many others had died too soon. Even if that was the case, I was afraid to die. I was afraid, but I thought that I should. Cloud saved me from what might have been.

Just seeing other people every day again was amazing. Waking up in a bed and smelling actual food cooking. Going down stairs and finding Tifa already up and working. I remember that for the first few days I would come down to the restaurant and just stand and watch her cook. Not even the cooking part, just watching her. Seeing her smiling and humming softly to herself as she moved about behind the counter, watching her relaxed motions, gracefully go through the mysterious rituals that somehow produced the miracle that is called breakfast. Tifa was a miracle herself to me for those first few weeks. She was alive. That was more than I had ever hoped to see in a person for longer than I could remember.

What was better than eating again was being touched again. I lost my parents before I got to that rumored "rebellious" stage, at which most children feel too mature to let their mothers hold them. I hadn't gotten to the point where I took them for granted yet. Of all the difficulties the Planet threw at me after the dropping of the plate, after the death of Mrs. Ruvie, not being able to go to my parents whenever it got to be too much was the worst. I acted strong among the Triple S, we all had to grow up long before our time. Eventually the longing to be held by someone was crushed to the point of numbness by all of the demands that needed to be met in order to stay alive. Ever since I started living with Tifa, I have the comfort of a sincere adult .

Sometimes I remember too much, and I think it shows on my face. At these times Tifa will drop what she's doing and hold me like my mother did, hugging me close, and we just stand there as I cry into her stomach. I am now at an age where I would be considered too old to cry, however, it doesn't come to this point very often. I have a lot to be happy about, I can drop all the sad things of the past and move forward. But those things still happened, so I feel that sometimes it is okay to cry.

I had to stop crying into her stomach for a while. I didn't want the stigma to act up and get her infected. So I stopped letting myself be held. After that it's all kind of blurry. I would get up in the mornings only to pass out halfway through the day and be carried back to my room. It was during these days that I met Marlene. I can't remember exactly when, but she kind of just started being a part of my conscious stages. I was already used to her presence by the time I had gotten accustomed enough to the pain to resist instant exhaustion. I didn't even ask what her name was, we were never formerly introduced. I was only able to start calling her Marlene because that's what I heard Tifa calling her.

Marlene is a lot younger than me, however, at the time we met it was my first time encountering another child in months. We got along well; she'd talk, I'd listen. She talked of churches and flowers and a man with a gun for an arm who apparently blocked out the sun. I didn't have a clue about what she meant, but her voice was very soothing to listen to. I'd lie in bed and she would change the cloth that bound my forehead to keep the stigma from seeping out. As she took care of me and chattered away, her young but not quite carefree tone would lull me into a peaceful slumber. Marlene, among other things, was an added blessing to the stream of windfall that I had come across.

I would go outside when I could. Being out in the sun helped me maintain consciousness. I would sit on the doorstep, my eyes would glaze over, and I would let myself be engulfed by the marvelous activity that surrounded me. I was in the city of Edge, Triple S's blood, sweat, and tears. What was meant to be our promised land. It was dirty, and loud. People died in the streets of the stigma, among other causes. But I could look past all of it and see that despite the terrible circumstances that we were all suffering, we were still here. We had still created the city of Edge. And Edge matched its residents perfectly, because, like everything those days, Edge was a miracle.

Nowadays I wander the city with Marlene and Surra, assisting in repairs and taking advantage of my newly clear mind to take in all the sights I couldn't absorb before. We all walk in a line down the street; I hold Marlene's hand, she holds Surra's, and Surra holds the paw of her little brother's moogle doll.

It's been two years since her brother died, but she refuses to let go of the doll. She started to recover in many ways since the stigma was washed away; but she refuses to let the memory of that day heal, the day that she watched Mennyt die. Sometimes she would ask me to come with her to Aerith's church, and we'd sit in the pew and pray. She would sit there for some time and then start to talk. She always talked about the past, always about what it was like before...everything. She grew up in sector three, she and her brother had lived with her father, who worked as a teacher at a secondary school. Her mother had died in the sector seven incident; she had been visiting her family. They had all been lost. Her father was taken by Geostigma six months before the Kadaj incident.

She usually just sits there and talks about everything before. She seems nearly stuck in the past, rarely does she ask that I recall "the other day" or even " last year". But today was different.

She had informed me, as was her habit by now, that "two o'clock seems like a nice time for visiting churches", and so we headed down together with canteens and knapsacks. After all, it's quite a march. We sat together like we always did, but after around three minutes she did something out of routine. She got up and strode over to the regenerating flower patch, knelt down and then started talking. This time she didn't talk about before we met. This time she talked about the more recent past. About when we met, and how she still had nightmares about what had happened in the Forgotten City, and about Cloud and Tifa and Aerith, and how she was glad that she couldn't remember Bahamut SIN.

"You know, Denzel. You're all the family I have now. Mennyt, Dad, Mom, they're all gone now. No matter how many times I tell you about them in this church, hoping that Aerith will let them come back like she did with Cloud, I know deep inside that they're not coming back. They've gone to join her family, but I'm not the lost child left alone in the world anymore, because I have you now.

"When Mennyt died, I was ready to die too. He had been all that kept me going. I kept thinking to myself, 'One more day, he's got to live just one more day, and you have to keep him company, so you can't give in to the stigma yet.' But I couldn't. I couldn't save him.

"But right after he died, then you came. When I was carrying him to the funeral mounds, and everyone was recoiling, even other victims of the stigma, you picked up Mennyt's doll for me. You were the first person outside my family to reach out to me since I caught it. You're all I have left now.

"Before, I had Mennyt as my only motivation to live; but now he's gone. I think it was good for him to stay with me until there was someone else I could cling to, I think they meant for it to be that way. But now that I know that they won't come back, I think it's about time that I tried moving forward."

I had come to crouch beside her at the edge of the flower bed, watching the lifestream trickling in little rivulets between the stems of the yellow and white flowers. She was twirling a flower between her fingers, first one way, then the other; watching as the stem bruised between her fingers and eventually snapped, scattering flower petals.

There was nothing I could say, and I felt there was nothing she especially wanted me to say. With Surra I have the rare experience of knowing that just being there is enough. I can sit in silence with her comfortably, and I feel that we communicate effectively without having to say anything at all. As we knelt there I decided to continue on with my own usual ritual. I folded my hands,

Because Surra had prayed every time we came here I eventually started to as well. I hadn't known before that she had been praying for her family all along, but I had figured it was something important.

I hadn't been brought up to be religious. My father hadn't believed in churchgoing. I don't know what my mother thought. The way I saw it, if everything works in a cycle, like Rufus says, and good always wins out in the end, then there has to be something above it all that causes it to happen. When I was little I used to get in trouble a lot for breaking things, whenever I protested my innocence my mother used to say to me, "You might as well tell the truth, a glass can't break itself." I figured the fate of the world was the same. There must have been something guiding everything along, ensuring our ultimate victory. I knew that there had to have been something before Aerith, probably not another Cetra, probably something that came before it all.

I didn't know what it was, but whenever I had come to the church with Surra I had felt an overwhelming presence of ancientness and wisdom. It was very awe inspiring; I got chills every time. But it also gradually came to make me feel very secure. Though I never discuss the events of the trips with Surra, I think she has sensed that they give me a deep sense of peace.

Before, whenever I prayed with Surra, my mind would just kind of wander. I would soak in the warm presence I felt there, but I didn't actually try to communicate with something or someone beyond the comprehension of this world. This time, however, I actually prayed.

I started to direct thoughts of my experiences in these last four years towards the sky, which was the direction I thought any celestial being looking out for us might be located. The plate, my parents, Mrs. Ruvie, Triple S, the Stigma, the rat, Cloud, Tifa, Marlene, the Kadaj incident, Surra, the WRO, Reeve, everything; I laid it all out, organizing my thoughts and feelings for the first time since Sector Seven. I had avoided thinking much about it before; before was all about survival. But now that Surra felt it was time for her to move on, I felt that I should move on too. Seeing clearly how strongly I felt about it all, finding just how scared I was, it was really incredible. Looking back I realized just how devastating the time in between was. It hadn't lasted a very long time, but it stood out very clearly in my mind. What I remembered most was my determination to catch that rat.

I then opened my eyes and began to laugh. Somehow it struck me as funny that I had clung so tightly to that goal of hunting down a rat, to do everything I could to survive, even when I no longer had anything to live for. I looked over at Surra, who was staring at me, puzzled. I had no longer had anything to live for then, but I had something now. I had been given the grace of having a family again; the pure luxury of having people love me, and even better, having people to love.

I quirked a smile as a rather odd thought entered my mind. If I had actually caught that rat, would I have just sat down and died afterward? Was that possible higher power keeping it away from me? I wonder if it would let me catch that rat now that it is no longer the only thing to keep me alive? I knew it was ridiculous. If there was something out there, why would it let me catch the rat now? Just to show that it was there? That it had been looking out for me in particular? Of course not.

I stood up to pace to the other side of the flower bed in order to observe a particularly large lifestream rivulet, and just as I stepped forward I felt something irregular under my shoe. A split second later my ears were pierced by a sharp and agonized squeak.

I now hold the rat cupped in my hands, a tight grip on its tail which I stepped on. Surra is staring at it too; lips tight, eyes wide. I am filled with a deep sense of irritation. This is a poor joke. To have the rat just when all meaning it has for me is gone, I feel like flinging it against the wall. But I'm staring into the rat's eyes, and I can see how frightened it is. Its little whiskers quiver as it reaches up to hide its face in its paws, but its tiny legs are not long enough to perform the action properly. My bitter feelings are slowly subsiding as I observe the terrified rat more closely. I had always thought that rats would be ugly creatures, what with how people go on and on about how disgusting they are; however, as I look at this particular rat, that is not what I'm thinking at all.

The rat is not ugly, or even scary. Its fur is matted, its eyes bulge, it looks more than slightly diseased and I shouldn't even touch it; but it's not ugly.

In the rat's sad state, I can't help but feel sorry for all of the rats around the Planet. This little rat must have been struggling to survive even longer than me. The rat does not have a family, like I do, to take care of it. The rat has no one to love it. Instead, the rat is hunted down for food and despised by all civilization for even daring to attempt to live. A rat is such a pitiful creature, and yet, in a way, through the very existence of its race, this rat saved my life. I look at the poor, unappreciated life; and as I do, my face is on its way to a smile once more. Because I see now why I could finally catch the rat.

I kneel down, and let it go.

(A/N: YES! I understand that a real rat would've bitten him and then ran away! But this is a symbolic rat, it's not gonna be realistic. Just wanted to get that in.)