rubyamberĀ replied to your post:Ā āYour Tseng relationships make me want to cry. ļæ½ļæ½ It's like he can't be...ā
If you donāt mind elaborating, what does aeris hear?
Let me transcribe the actual conversation first. The party enters the Temple of the Ancients and sees Tseng slumped over, bleeding out in front of the altar.
Tseng:Ā āOh, Iāve been tricked... Itās not the Promised Land Sephirothās searching for.ā Cloud:Ā āSephiroth? Heās inside?ā Tseng:Ā āLook for yourself.ā (punches the floor in frustration)Ā āDamn! Letting Aeris go was the start of my bad luck. The President was wrong.ā Aeris:Ā āYouāre wrong! The Promised Land isnāt like what you imagined. And Iām not going to help. Either way, there was no way Shinra couldāve won.ā Tseng:Ā āPretty harsh. Sounds like something youād say.ā (Aeris runs into the corner and starts crying. Tseng gives Cloud the keystone. Cloud heads over to Aeris.) Cloud:Ā āYou crying?ā Aeris:Ā āTseng's with our enemy, the Turks, but I've known him since we were little. There's not a lot of people that I can say that about. In fact, there's probably only a handful of people in the world who really know me.ā
And thatās it. Aeris never follows up on that thought or explains what she means by what she just said or why sheās feeling some kind of way, and Cloud doesnāt press the issue further. The party then heads inside and leaves Tseng to his death.
Due to the fact that thereās no follow-up, what's not overtly revealed to the player or even to Aeris and Tseng themselves is that they're having two different conversations right now.
Whatās important to note is the placement of the sentenceĀ āThe President was wrong.ā He doesnāt say āItās not the Promised Land Sephirothās searching for. The President was wrong.ā Instead, he says, āLetting Aeris go was the start of my bad luck. The President was wrong.āĀ
While Tseng is inside the Temple of the Ancients, two things happen:
1. He asks Elena to dinner
2. Sephiroth tells him that he's using the knowledge of the Ancients found at this temple for his plan -- which is to kill every single person on the planet
Before we get too deep into this, we have to remember that Rufus isnāt looking for the Promised Land for the sake of finding the Promised Land. Heās doing it because he thinks he can head Sephiroth off at the pass there (and then heāll also have the Promised Land to exploit for himself later as a bonus). His #1 priority from the second he takes office to the second he leaves office is to hunt down and kill Sephiroth. He says this out loud on multiple occasions.
That's why it's such a huge revelation to Tseng when Sephiroth says that his goal isn't the Promised Land at all, and that the knowledge of the Ancients is all that he was after.
So, Tseng isnāt lamenting Aeris getting away because now they canāt find the Promised Land. Heās not beating himself up for her escape from Shinra HQ or for the fact that he just let the party pass through the Mythril Mines. Because the Promised Land doesnāt matter. Heās talking about something else.
Tseng didn't let Aeris go physically. He let her go emotionally. Rufus told him to let her go. And Tseng eventually and reluctantly did just that, asked out Elena, and then upon facing his own death realized that he never should've let Aeris go -- he should've stood by her side. Because if he did -- if he'd followed his heart and put his foot down and insisted to Rufus that Aeris was the priority -- then maybe Shinra would've had a fighting chance against Sephiroth. Because if anyone could have unlocked the knowledge of the Ancients and headed Sephiroth off at the pass, it was her. And Tseng only ever wanted to be by her side and keep her safe while she did it. (But of course Rufus recognized that it was romantic inclination and sentiment that was driving that urge in Tseng and told him to let it/her go.)
Tseng basically confesses his love for her and renounces his loyalty to Rufus in this moment, but Aeris doesnāt hear it because sheās too immediately upset by whatās happening. She justĀ hearsĀ āPromised Landā andĀ āI shouldnāt have let Aeris goā and her immediate kneejerk response is a very deep, personal hurt.
Aeris is watching this man who has been her best friend for ten years bleed out and die before her very eyes, and she thinks that heās using his final words to call her a lost tool and lament that he couldnāt have done his job better.
Her response is basically, "This is all you have to say to me? Didn't these last ten years mean anything to you? Didn't I mean anything to you? Because you meant something to me." And that's why she starts crying. She knows she'll never see him again, and now on top of that it feels like all of her emotions have been wasted on someone who never actually cared about her.
But sheās upset. So thatās not what she actually says.
So when Aeris yells at him and says that Shinra could have never won anyway, he takes that as a wholesale rejection of him, even though thatās not the case at all. That's why his response is, "Pretty harsh. Sounds like something you'd say."
They just talk past each other throughout the entire scene, and then the two of them never see each other again.
Itās all very tragic and I want to die.
